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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 






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INTRODUCTION 



TO THE 



STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY 



BY / 

WILLIAM T. HARRIS 



COMPRISING PASSAGES FROM HIS WRITINGS 
SELECTED AND ARRANGED WITH COMMENTARY AND ILLUSTRATION 



By MARIETTA EIES 






Presented as a thesis in connection with work for the Masters Degree at the 
University of Michigan. 




NEW YORK 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1889 






\y 



Copyright, 1889, 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 



PKEFATOEY NOTE. 



The compiler and editor of this volume, Miss Kies, 
has my full consent to and approval of her selections and 
arrangement of such portions of my writings as she 
finds suitable for her purpose. I shall be very glad if 
this book proves helpful to her classes or to any persons 
who may use it. 

"William T. Haeeis. 

Concord, Mass., July 25, 1889. 



PKEFACE. 



The present work of compiling and arranging some 
of the thoughts of Dr. Harris in a form convenient for 
class-use has been undertaken in order to bring together 
in a book widely scattered materials which the writer 
has found useful in presenting philosophy to her classes 
at Mt. Holyoke Seminary and College. 

Philosophy as presented by Dr. Harris gives to the 
student an interpretation and explanation of the phases 
of existence which render even the ordinary affairs of 
life in accordance with reason ; and for the higher or 
spiritual phases of life, his interpretations have the 
power of a great illumination ; and many of the stu- 
dents are apparently awakened to an interest in philos- 
ophy, not only as a subject to be taken as a prescribed 
study, but also as a subject of fruitful interest for future 
years and as a key which unlocks many of the myster- 
ies of other subjects pursued in a college course. 

The " illustrations " given are such as have been 
used for several years at the Seminary. Such examples 
or illustrations have been found helpful in assisting stu- 
dents who have been accustomed to study the external 
aspects of the world to make the transition to a more 



vi INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

thoughtful method, and thus to discover the fundamen- 
tal principles of a world of things and events. 

Those who have attempted to study the profound 
thoughts of Dr. Harris know how difficult it is to " get 
started." For the benefit of those students who have 
not jet found the philosophy of Dr. Harris " easy read- 
ing," a few suggestions as to the method used in teach- 
ing the subject at Mt. Holyoke may be in order. 

The majority of the students who come to the study 
of the subject have never studied any form of mental 
philosophy. The phases of the subject are presented 
in the order given in this book. From six to eight 
weeks, four lessons each week, are taken for the first 
consideration of the subject, with lectures, explanations, 
etc. Yery little is expected of the students in the way 
of recitation during their first time over the subject. 
About three fourths of the hour of each lesson is taken 
for explanation and comparison of views of other 
writers on the subject under consideration, the remain- 
ing one fourth of the hour for the Socratic method, 
questions and answers, the students presenting the ques- 
tions. By this method the student is enabled to get at 
least a glimpse of the whole subject as a system, and 
then he is prepared to advance more rapidly. 

But in attaining the first stages of philosophic 
knowing persistent effort as well as patient waiting is 
needed. After the first presentation of the subject, 
the same ground is gone over, taking the divisions of 
the subject in the same order, and giving nearly as 
many weeks to the work. This time over the subject the 
students, by means of recitation and papers prepared by 
them, are expected to do. the greater part of the work. 



PREFACE. Vii 

The recitations and reading and discussion of the papers 
occupy three fourths of the hour, and one fourth is de- 
voted to the views of the leading contemporary writers 
on the same questions, with occasional reference to the 
opinions of historic philosophers. This course is de- 
signed as a preparation for the study of the history 
of philosophy and as a means for interpreting the 
thoughts of the great philosophers of all centuries. 

The strongest desire in preparing this book is that 
students will be led to study the thoughts of Dr. Harris 
in articles and books as originally presented by him, and 
to have a stronger desire to enter the fields of historic 
thought. 

Marietta Kjes. 

South Hadley, Mass., June, 1889. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 



Methods of Study. page 

Introspection : Psychology — Physiological Psychology — Empirical Psy- 
chology — Comparative Psychology — Philosophy. . . .1 

CHAPTER II. 

Pee suppositions of Experience. 
Nature of the Problems of Philosophy— The Starting-Point in Philo- 
sophical Investigation — Space, Time : Infinite — Effect, Cause, 
Causa sui, or Self-cause — Beings : Dependent, implies another, de- 
rived from another= World; Independent, whole, totality, self- 
determined^ Creator . . . . . . .15 

CHAPTER in. 
Philosophy of Nature. 
The "World: Self- Activity shown in Inorganic Forms — Organic; 
Plants, Animals, Man . . . . . .35 

CHAPTER IV. 
Man: A Self-active Individual. 
Man is Self-Activity, Self-Consciousness— Channels of Development 
of Activity : Feeling, or Sense-perception, Representation, Under- 
standing, Reason, Emotions, Will . . . .48 

SECTION I.— SENSE-PERCEPTION. 

Degree of Activity shown in Sense-perception: Touch, Taste, Smell, 
Hearing, Seeing . . . . . . .55 



CONTENTS. 

SECTION II.— REPRESENTATION. 



PAGE 



Self- Activity shown in Eepresentation : Eecollection, Fancy, Imagina- 
tion, Attention, Memory . . . . . .59 

SECTION III. 

Significance of the Power to Use Language . . . .71 

SECTION IV. — REFLECTION. 

"General Objects" of Memory, as Thought, become Judgments— 
Sense-perception : Sensuous Ideas perceive Objects ; Identity, 
Difference— Understanding : Abstract Ideas investigate Object and 
Environment; Eelations— The "General Objects" or "Univer- 
sals" are possible because of Eeason : Absolute Idea or Eational 
Insight knows Logical Conditions of Existence . . .74 

SECTION V.— THE SYLLOGISM. 

The Mind Acts in the Modes of Syllogism: Sensuous Ideas use Second 
Figure, First Figure, Third Figure; Abstract Ideas use Third 
Figure, First Figure, Second Figure ; Absolute Idea uses Third 
Figure . . . . . . . . .96 

SECTION VI.— THE THIRD STAGE OF THINKING : THE ABSOLUTE IDEA, 
OR THE REASON. 

Eational Insight knows : Causality, Self-cause — Space, Time — Quality, 
Quantity — Change, Self-activity — Life, Individuality, Absolute 
Personality — Absolute Thought; manifested in Truth, Beauty, 
Goodness . . . . . . ... 125 

SECTION VII.— THE EMOTIONS. 

Duplication of Self- Activity in Emotions : Sentient, Psychical, Eational 249 

SECTION VIII. — THE WILL. 

Stage of Knowing presupposed in Contemplation of Freedom — Sub- 
stantial Will : Self- activity : Totality: Freedom — Formal Will: Ac- 
tion — Change sometimes regarded as produced only by Environ- 
ment: External Conditions ; Motives . . . .263 



CHAPTEE V. 
Immortality of Man 



EXPLANATORY. 



Where simply the abbrevia r ion "vol.*' has been used, the 
reference is to the "Journal of Speculative Philosophy." 

" III." has been used as an abbreviation of the word " illustra- 
tion." 

The intention has been to inclose in one set of quotation-marks 
a printed portion from the works of Dr. Harris, taken consecu- 
tively from one place, though in a few instances paragraphs have 
been transposed. Introductory words and parenthetical phrases 
hare occasionally been changed, but the intention has been not in 
any instance to change the thought of the sentence. Below will 
be found a list of the names of articles and books used in the 
compilation; the pages are given in foot-notes. 

Articles and Books used in Compilation. 
" Music as a Form of Art," Vol. I. 
" Introduction to Philosophy," Vols. I and II. 
" The Last Judgment," Vol. 3. 
" The History of Philosophy in Outline," Vol. 10. 
" The Relation of Religion to Art," Vol. 10. 
" Michael Angelo's Fates, Vol. 11." 
" Outlines of Educational Psychology," Vol. 14. 
" The Philosophy of Religion," Vol. 15. 
*" Philosophy in Outline," Vol. 17. 
" Immortality of the Individual," Vol. 19. 
" Is Pantheism the Legitimate Outcome of Modern Science? " 
Vol. 19. 



x ii INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

" Psychological Inquiry," " Education," Vol. VI. 

" Philosophy of Education," International Education Series. 

" The Mind of the Child," International Education Series. 

" Philosophy made Simple," u The Ohautauquan " (March, 
April, May, 1886). 

" Religion in Art," " The Ohautauquan " (January, February, 
March, 1886). 

"Thoughts on Educational Psychology," "Illinois School 
Journal," series of articles beginning March, 1888. 

" Reports of Lectures at Boston University," " The Journal of 
Education," December, 1888; January, 1889. 

" Aristotle's Doctrine of Eeason," " Journal of the American 
Akedeme," June, 1888. 

" Historical Epochs of Art," " Concord Lectures," 1882. 

" Results in Ontology," " Concord Lectures," 1887. 

"Theory of the Syllogism," "Concord Lectures," 1887. 



INTRODUCTION 
TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



CHAPTER I. 



METHODS OF STUDY. 



Introspection: Psychology — Physiological Psychology -~ Enipirical Psy- 
chology—Comparative Psychology —Philosophy. 

Introspection : Psychology.^- " Introspection is in- 
ternal observation— our consciousness of the activity of 
the mind itself. The subject who observes is the object 
observed. Consciousness is knowing of self. This seems 
to be the characteristic of mind and mental phenomena — 
there is always some degree of self -relation ; there is 
self-feeling or self-knowledge. Even in mere life in the 
vegetative soul there is self -relation. This we shall studv 
as our chief object of interest in psychology. 

" We will note first the contrast between external 
and internal observation. Outward observation is ob- 
jective perception or sense perception. It perceives 
things and environments. Things are always relative to 
their environment. Things are therefore dependent be- 
ings. They stand in causal relation to other things, and 
if moved are moved from without by external forces. 

" Introspection, or internal observation, on the other 



2 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

hand, perceives the activity of the mind, and this is self- 
activity, and not a movement caused by external forces. 
Feelings, thoughts, volitions, are phases of self -activity. 
This we shall consider more in detail. Let us note that 
a feeling, a thought, or a volition implies subject and 
object. Each is an activity and an activity of the self. 
External perception does not perceive any self. It per- 
ceives only what is extended in time and space and what 
is consequently multiple, what is moved by something 
else and not self-moved. If it beholds living objects it 
does not behold the self that animates the body, but 
only the body that is organically formed by the self. 
But introspection beholds the self. This is a very im- 
portant distinction between the two orders of observa- 
tion, external and internal. The former can perceive 
only phenomena, the latter can perceive noumena. The 
former can perceive only what is relative, and dependent 
on something else ; the latter can perceive what is inde- 
pendent and self-determined, a primary cause and source 
of movement. 

" To pass from the first order of observation, which 
perceives external things, to the second order of obser- 
vation, which perceives self-activity, is to take a great 
step. We are dimly conscious of our entire mental activ- 
ity, but we do not ( until we have acquired psychologic 
skill) distinguish and separately identify its several 
phases. It is the same in the outer world — we know 
many things in ordinary consciousness, but only in sci- 
ence do we unite the items of our knowledge systemat- 
ically so as to make each assist in the explanation of all. 
Common knowledge lacks unity and system. In the 
inner world, too, there is common introspection, unsys- 



METHODS OF STUDY. 3 

tematized and devoid of unity — the light of our ordinary 
consciousness. But there is higher scientific introspec- 
tion which discovers both unity and system." * 

" This subject of introspection leads out to the end 
of the world and reappears underneath the method of 
modern natural science which studies all objects in 
their history — in their evolution. Strangely enough the 
scientists of the present day decry in psychology what 
they call the ' introspective method.' And just as in the 
case of the repudiation of teleology, they are bound to 
return to some other form of what they repudiate. 
Kenounce teleology, and you find nothing but teleology 
in everything. Renounce introspection, and you are to 
find introspection the fundamental moving principle of 
all nature. All things have their explanation in a blind 
attempt on the part of nature to look at itself." f 

III. — A botanist is able to study a plant only through 
acts of introspection. There are the unrefiective acts of 
introspection by which he is able to know a plant as one 
of a class of objects, and the conscious reflective acts 
of introspection by which he is able to recognize a plant 
as belonging to a particular class and species; for in 
this study of the plant life, he learns the characteristics 
of the plant, the manner of growth, and the relations of 
this plant to the whole vegetable world and animal 
world, and in doing this he discriminates between the 
nature of the energy of the plant and that of the human 
mind. 

Physiological Psychology. — " The so-called physio- 
logical psychology commences with the living organism, 

* " Illinois School Journal," vol. vii, pp. 346, 347. f Ibid., p. 349. 



4 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

and investigates the correlation of psychic phenomena 
with corporeal changes, and seeks to find what psychic 
phenomena correspond to the several corporeal stimuli. 
Its chief industry may be said to be the search for an 
explanation of mental phenomena in bodily functions. 
These again it seeks to explain through environment." * 

" It is evident that on the physiological basis psycho- 
logical discovery is limited to bodily functions. The 
idea of life is as far as it can go without transcending 
what is physiological. A great service will be performed 
by those investigators who explore this field and demon- 
strate to science that thinking activity transcends phys- 
ical functions, and refute physiologically the assertion of 
Moleschott, that 'thought is a secretion of the brain, 
just as bile is a secretion of the liver.' Then the limited 
form of self-activity, which is the principle of life, will 
be laid aside for the pure self-activity which we call 
thought. 

"Physiological psychology, as we have stated, limits 
its investigations to discovering physical concomitants 
of mental actions. What portion of the body is affected 
to movement or change upon occasion of a given mental 
act? what kind of motion and its quantitative value? 
also, what mental action or response there is to various 
kinds of bodily stimuli ? what part of the observation 
is external or objective experiment ? and what part of 
it is introspective ? are interesting questions. The pre- 
suppositions of the observation are : 1. a world of time 
and space in which the body is conditioned; 2. an in- 
ternal perception or reflection that can observe what is 

* " Education," vol. vi, p. 159. 



METHODS OF STUDY. 5 

witliin consciousness, to wit : a subjective world of feeling 
whose form is time and a world of thought whose form 
is neither space nor time ; 3. concomitance or succes- 
sion is all that can ever be observed in these fields ; each 
series of facts requires observation by a different mental 
act — the physiological by the external senses, the feel- 
ings and thoughts by introspection of consciousness. 
You certainly can never perceive a feeling or a thought 
or a volition by touch, taste, smell, hearing, or seeing. 
You may only infer the existence of a thought, feeling, 
or volition by some external movement or change which 
you perceive by the senses. 

" The scope of physiological psychology is logically 
limited at the outset. It can never catch a thought or 
feeling outside the internal self, and hence can never 
identify it with any external fact or object whatever, 
although- it may fix an order of sequence or concomi- 
tance between the items of a series observed internally 
and a series observed externally. 

" The legitimate conclusion here, therefore, is that 
in all psychology, physiological or otherwise, the scien- 
tist who observes must be able to reproduce within his 
own mind for himself the psychological phenomena that 
he perceives, for he can never perceive any psycholog- 
ical phenomena in any other being. The mental phe- 
nomena of children as well as of adults, of savages as well 
as of cultured people, can never be perceived as external 
* phenomena, but only in one's self and inferred to exist 
in others as concomitant to certain external movements 
or changes which are perceived to exist externally. 
Here one comes to the paramount importance of insight 
into what we shall call pure psychology of thought in 



6 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

connection with physiology. If an investigator does 
not know how to discriminate thinking and reasoning 
on different planes, it is absurd to expect that he will 
recognize those different planes of thinking or reasoning 
in others. Even clear, human speech does not convey 
a generalization to the mind that is not cultured enough 
to make that generalization." * 

"What is to be expected from researches in physio- 
logical psychology, limited as it is % To this we re- 
ply : Many and very great services, especially to family 
and school education. All of the provinces where the 
body acts as a means of expression to the external world, 
and all the provinces where the self-active mind uses the 
body as a means of exploring the world — all these prov- 
inces have, of course, a physiological factor which should 
be thoroughly understood qualitatively and quantita- 
tively. 

" All cases of insanity, idiocy ; all matters of hered- 
itary descent ; all that pertains to the use and abuse of 
the five organs of sense ; all that relates to food, cloth- 
ing, and shelter, as favorable or unfavorable to the de- 
velopment of the soul; the questions of comparative 
psychology of nations — of the modifying influences of 
climate, age, sex, and occupation ; and, finally, such phe- 
nomena as sleep, dreams, somnambulism, and the occur- 
rences that are supposed to belong to the ' night-side of 
nature,' together with epidemics and superstitions — here 
is an immense field in which physiological psychology 
is bound to be of increasing service to man. But so 
long as it is cultivated apart from pure psychology, and 

* "Education," vol. vi, pp. 159-161. 



METHODS OF STUDY. 7 

with a sort of persuasion that there is no self -active 
being that we are concerned with in psychology, it will 
be impossible to expect any first-class results." * 

III.— Professor Lad d, after a careful consideration of 
the quality and quantity of sensations coming through 
the sense-organs and an enumeration and description 
of various experiments that noted physiological psy- 
chologists have made, concludes that " in general, it may 
be said that every mental state has its value determined, 
both as respects its quality and its so-called quantity, by 
its relation to other states "; or, in other words, his con- 
clusion is that even the physiological psychologist is 
greatly dependent upon "introspection" for his re- 
sults, f 

Empirical Psychology: — " The good old-fashioned 
psychology laid chief stress on the 'faculties' of the 
mind. The weaker and more metaphysical (in the bad 
sense of the word ' metaphysical,' signifying analytical 
abstract thinking) adherents to this view of the mind 
went so far as to call these faculties ' organs ' of mind, 
thus betraying the fact that they had unconsciously or 
purposely substituted the idea of life for that of mind. 
Life is organic being, and always reveals itself in organs. 
Mind does not thus manifest itself, but its so-called fac- 
ulties are degrees of self -development which arise as the 
self-activity becomes complex by repeating its acts of 
reflection. Thus the metaphysical psychology, whose 
fundamental defect is that it regards the soul as a sub- 
stance or thing instead of a self -activity, goes on to speak 



* " Education," vol. vi, p. 162. 

f Ladd's " Physiological Psychology," Part II, chaps, iii, iv, and v. 



8 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of the faculties of the mind as if they were properties 
of a mind-thing, instead of modes of activity of an essen- 
tial spontaneity. In using the word ' organs ' for * fac- 
ulties,' metaphysical psychology goes over to the ground 
of physiology or the science of living beings, and natur- 
ally enough becomes phrenology." * 

III. — A large part of the text-books in common use 
furnish illustration of this kind of psychology. These 
writers vary in the standpoint taken from those who 
would examine and measure the " faculties " or " or- 
gans " of the mind according to the standard of a " com- 
mon consciousness," thus virtually asserting that the 
thought of a Plato can be brought within the same 
limits as that of the most ordinary mind, to those 
who hold that the mind possesses the " lower facul- 
ties " which can be developed and improved, but the 
"higher faculties," or "innate ideas," are directly be- 
stowed upon the mind, and that these ideas can be 
no further analyzed or understood, and only furnish 
a background for the development of the lower phases 
of the mind without themselves undergoing develop- 
ment. 

Comparative Psychology. — " Experience, it is true, 
marshals its train of facts before us in an endless suc- 
cession every day of our lives. But without scientific 
method one fact does much to obliterate all others by 
its presence. Out of sight, they are out of mind. 
Method converts unprofitable experience, wherein noth- 
ing abides except vague and uncertain surmise, into 
science. In science the present fact is deprived of its 

t * " Education," vol. vi, p. 158. 



METHODS OF STUDY. 9 

ostentatious and all-absorbing interest by the act of re- 
lating it to all other facts. We classify the particular 
with its fellow-particulars, and it takes its due rank. 
Such classification, moreover, eliminates from it the un- 
essential elements." * 

"The characteristics of accuracy and precision, 
which make science exact, are derived from quantity. 
Fix the order of succession, the date, the duration, the 
locality, the environment, the extent of the sphere of 
influence, the number of manifestations, and the num- 
ber of cases of intermittence, and you have exact 
knowledge of a phenomenon. When stated in quanti- 
tative terms, your experience is useful to other observ- 
ers. It is easy to verify it or to add an increment. By 
quantification, science grows and grows continually, 
without retrograde movements. 

" One does not forget, of course, that there is some- 
thing besides the quantitative and altogether above 
the quantitative. The object itself is more impor- 
tant than its quantitative relations. The soul, as a 
self-active essence, is the object in psychology. Sci- 
ence determines the quantitative of its phenomenal 
manifestation. In other words, science determines ex- 
actly the time when, the place where, the duration 
and frequency, the extent and degree of the manifes- 
tation of this self-activity in the body and through the 
body. 

" The nature of feelings, volitions, and ideas in 
themselves is the object of introspective psychology 
and metaphysics. But all will concede that parents and 

* " The Senses and the Will," Preyer, Editor's Preface, p. 5. 



10 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

teachers are directly interested in the order of devel- 
opment of the soul from its lower functions into its 
higher ones, and are consequently concerned with these 
quantitative manifestations." * 

" The supreme interest to us in these observations 
is the development from lower degrees of intelligence 
to higher ones. The immense interval that separates 
plant life from animal life, is almost paralleled by the 
interval between the animal and the human being. 
From mere nutrition to sensation is a great step ; from 
mere sensation, to the conscious employment of ethical 
ideas and the perception of logical necessity and uni- 
versality is an equal step. Yet it is to be assumed that 
the transitions exist in all degrees, and that the step 
from any degree to the next one is not difficult when 
the natural means is discovered. It is this means that 
comparative psychology is discovering. 

u The infant is contemplated in the process of gain- 
ing command over himself. His sense organs gradually 
become available for perception; his muscles become 
controllable by his will. Each new acquisition becomes 
in turn an instrument of further progress. 

" Exact science determines when and where the ani- 
mal phase leaves off and the purely human begins — where 
the organic phase ends and the individual begins. The 
discrimination of impulsive, reflective, and instinctive 
movements, all of them organic, throws light on the 
genesis of mind out of its lower antecedent. Imitation 
is the first manifestation of the transition from the 
organic to the strictly spiritual. In this connection it 

* " The Senses and the Will," Preyer, Editor's Preface, p. 6. 



METHODS OF STUDY. H 

is, before all, an important question, What is the signifi- 
cance of the relapse into unconscious instinct through 
the formation of habit ? We do an act by great special 
effort of the will and intellect ; we repeat it until it is 
done with ease. It gradually lapses into unconscious 
use and wont, and has become instinctive and organic." * 

III. It is of interest that Prof. Preyer discovers 
among many other things, from his observations of chil- 
dren and animals, that an infant uses the sense of sight 
in the first day of his life ; that indications of the use 
of the sense of hearing vary greatly in time, but ap- 
pear as early as the fourth day of the child's life ; and 
that a child can probably taste and smell soon after 
birth ; and also that in the lower animals these senses 
are much more completely developed at birth than with 
children. And while the instinctive and reflex move- 
ments of the child are spontaneous, the imitative or 
voluntary movements, which indicate a development of 
the will, do not take place until after the forming of 
ideas, and that early in the mind of the child there is 
the " formation of concepts without language." 

Philosophy. — " Philosophy is not a science of things 
in general, but a science that investigates the presuppo- 
sitions of experience, and discovers the nature of the 
first principle. Philosophy does not set up the extrava- 
gant pretension to know all things. It does not 'take 
all knowledge for its province,' any more than geology 
or astronomy or logic does. Geology aspires to know 
the entire structure of this globe ; astronomy to know 
all the stars ; logic to know the structure of the reason- 

* " The Senses and the Will," Preyer, Editor's Preface, pp. 6, 7. 



12 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ing process. Philosophy attempts to find the neces- 
sary a priori elements or factors in experience, and ar- 
range them into a system by deducing them from a 
first principle. Not the forms of reasoning alone, but 
the forms of sense perception, of reflection, of specu- 
lative knowing, and the very forms which condition 
being, or existence itself, are to be investigated. The 
science of necessary forms is a very special science, be- 
cause it does not concern itself with collecting and 
arranging the infinite multitude of particular objects in 
the world and identifying their species and genera, as 
the particular sciences do. It investigates the presup- 
posed conditions and ascends to the one supreme con- 
dition. It therefore turns its back on the multitude of 
particular things, and seizes them in the unity of their 
' ascent and cause,' as George Herbert names it. The 
particular sciences and departments of knowledge col- 
lect and classify and explain phenomena. Philoso- 
phy collects and classifies and explains their explana- 
tions. Its province is much more narrow and special 
than theirs. If to explain meant to find the many, 
the different, the particular examples or specimens, 
philosophy would have to take all knowledge for its 
province if it aspired to explain the explanations offered 
in the several sciences. But that is not its meaning. 
To explain means to find the common, the generic prin- 
ciple in the particular. This is just the opposite of 
that other process which would take all knowledge in 
its infinite details for its province. To explain all 
knowledge is not to know all things." * 

* Vol. 17, pp. 296, 297. 



METHODS OF STUDY. 13 

"Philosophy is not religion, nor a substitute for re- 
ligion, any more than it is art or a substitute for art. 
There is a distinction, also, between philosophy and the- 
ology, although philosophy is a necessary constituent of 
theology. While theology must necessarily contain a 
historical and biographical element, and endeavor to find 
in that element the manifestation of necessary and uni- 
versal principles, philosophy, on the other hand, devotes 
itself exclusively to the consideration of those universal 
and necessary conditions of existence which are found 
to exist in experience, not as furnished by experience, 
but as logical, a priori conditions of experience itself." * 

III. — Mathematics discovers and states as laws the 
position and action of bodies in space and time ; philoso- 
phy discovers the nature of time and space which condi- 
tion the existence of things and events. The physical sci- 
ences take molecules and atoms as convenient " working 
hypotheses," and discover how these behave under dif- 
ferent circumstances, and formulate laws for this be- 
havior, and classify the various phenomena presented by 
their activity; philosophy discovers the nature of a 
thing, its activity, and sees the correlation of its energy 
with the different forms of force in the universe. The 
biological sciences investigate the phases of life — plant, 
animal, and that of man — the nature of cellular tissue 
and its structure, and the causes and conditions which 
produce its numerous variations in classes, genera, and 
species, and the characteristics and phenomena shown 
in the process of growth ; philosophy interprets the 
manifestations of life as manifestations of self-activity 

* Vol. 17, p. 310. 



14 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

in different degrees of completeness — plant life, animal 
life, and that of man. Psychology studies the mind or 
soul as a self-active, self-determined individual, and 
finds out how the individual develops in the channels 
of feeling, thought, and will, and classifies the phenom- 
ena presented in the phases of development; philoso- 
phy discovers not only motion — self-activity — but also 
discovers that self-determination is rendered possible be- 
cause of God, freedom and immortality. The sciences 
which pertain to the relations of man with man investi- 
gate the conditions of the industrial, civil, social, and 
political relations of society, determine the causes which 
have produced the present conditions, and seek, by a 
study of past and present conditions, to determine how 
the institutions of society can assist in a better adjust- 
ment of these relations ; moral philosophy considers 
the present condition of the individual, the family, soci- 
ety, state, and church in the light of what they ought to 
be, and compares the present life of each with its ideal 
life ; philosophy considers the nature of the will which 
renders it possible and desirable for man to combine 
with man in the institutions of the family, civil society, 
state, and church, in order that the individual may re- 
enforce society, and society the individual. 



CHAPTEE II. 

PRESUPPOSITIONS OF EXPERIENCE. 

Nature of the Problems of Philosophy— The Starting-Point in Philosophical 
Investigation — Space, Time : Infinite — Effect, Cause, Causa sui, or Self- 
cause — Beings : Dependent, implies another, derived from another= 
World; Independent, whole, totality, self-determined = Creator. 

Nature of the Problems of Philosophy. — "The 
problems of philosophy are perennial. Each individual 
must solve them for himself when he comes to the age 
of reflection. No number of philosophers can ever set- 
tle philosophic questions so that it will not be neces- 
sary for each individual to think out solutions for him- 
self. Questions of mere fact in nature can be settled 
by investigation, so that a mere statement suffices to 
convey the result to a school-boy. But it is not possible 
to ' settle ' matters of insight just as we settle matters of 
fact. A truth that requires for its comprehension a 
certain degree of cultured power of thought can not, by 
any possibility, be taught as a matter of fact to a youth 
who has not yet arrived at the necessary stage of 
thinking. 

" We recognize this quite readily in the acquirement 
of mathematical truth. Such truth can not be conveyed 
to minds that will not or can not grasp the elementary 
conceptions and make the combinations necessary. Only 
by intellectual energy can those truths be seen, and even 



l(j INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

mathematics has not * settled ' anything for people who 
have no insight into its demonstrations. Philosophic 
knowing is knowing of logical conditions of being and 
experience. It is, therefore, a special kind of knowing 
that arises from reflection. These logical conditions of 
existence are invisible to the one who does not spe- 
cially reflect upon them. "When one sees them at all, 
he sees that they are necessary elements of experi 
ence. It is a third stage of knowing, this knowing of 
logical presuppositions, and its insights can not be seen 
from the first or second stage of knowing. (The three 
stages of knowing are considered in chapter iv. section 
iv.) 

" Truths that are i settled ' in philosophy may yet 
seem to be impossibilities to the one whose intellectual 
view is on the second stage of knowing." * 

The Starting- Point. — " To illustrate philosophic 
knowing, and at the same time to enter its province 
and begin philosophizing, we shall take up at once 
a consideration of three ideas — space, time, and 
cause. Space and time — as the condition of nature or 
the world, as the necessary presuppositions of extension 
and multitude — will furnish us occasion to consider the 
infinite and the possibility of knowing it. The idea of 
cause will lead us to the fundamental insight on which 
true philosophy rests. 3 ' f 

Space. — " In all experience we deal with sensible ob- 
jects and their changes. The universal condition of the 
existence of sensible objects is space. Each object is 
limited or finite, but the universal condition of the ex- 

* Vol. 17, p. 342. f Vol. 17, p. 297. 



PRESUPPOSITIONS OF EXPERIENCE. 17 

istence of objects is self-limited or infinite. An object 
of the senses possesses extension and limits, and, conse- 
quently, has an environment. We find ourselves neces- 
sitated to think an environment in order to think the ob- 
ject as a limited object. 

" Here we have, first the object, and second the en- 
vironment as mutually limiting and excluding, and as 
correlatives. But the ground or condition of both ob- 
ject and its environment is space. Space makes both 
possible. Space is a necessary idea. We may think this 
particular object or not — it may exist or it may not. So, 
too, this particular environment may exist or not, al- 
though some environment is necessary. But space must 
exist, whether this particular object or environment ex- 
ists or not. Here we have three steps toward absolute 
necessity : 1. The object which is not necessary, but 
may or may not exist — may exist now, but cease after 
an interval ; 2. The environment which must exist in 
some form if the object exists — a hypothetical necessity ; 
3. The logical condition of the object and its environ- 
ment, which must, as space, exist, whether the object 
exist or not. 

u Again, note the fact that the object ceases where 
the environment begins. But space does not cease with 
the object nor with the environment ; it is continued or 
affirmed by each. The space in which the object exists 
is continued by the space in which its environment ex- 
ists. Space is infinite." * 

III. — Suppose, for instance, one imagines a definite 
portion of space, say two feet each way, and then an- 

* Vol. 17, pp. 297, 298. 



18 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

other portion of equal dimensions about the former, and 
so on with successive additions without limit ; the im- 
agination soon discovers that it fails to grasp the extent 
of space pictured, and instead of a picture of the infinite 
the indefinite is the result. Then suppose that the 
mind with its thinking activity of reason sees that the 
one portion of space in limiting another portion really 
extends itself, and so the limitation is really a self -limit- 
ation, which is a continuation. Space in so limiting it- 
self is infinite. 

Time. — " The thought of space differs essentially 
from the thought of an object of experience because it 
is a thought of what is essentially infinite — infinite in 
its nature. Hence we arrive at this astonishing result — 
the knowledge of what is infinite underlies and makes 
possible our knowledge derived from experience, and 
the infinite makes possible the existence of what is finite. 
We may find all of these results by considering the na- 
ture of time. "While space is the condition of the ex- 
istence of things, time is the condition of the existence 
of all events or changes. If there is a change, it de- 
mands time for its existence ; if there is an event, it 
demands time for its occurrence. Again, time is infi- 
nite ; any finite time or duration presupposes other time 
to have existed before it and after it, and is thus con- 
tinued by the very time that limits it. If we suppose 
all time to be finite, we see at once that it contradicts 
this hypothesis ; because, if finite, it must have begun, 
and to begin implies a time before it in which it was 
not. Such a time before it, however, does not limit 
it, but affirms its existence beyond the boundary we have 
placed to it. Thus time is infinite, and yet it is the 



PRESUPPOSITIONS OF EXPERIENCE. 19 

condition necessary to the existence of events and 
changes." * 

III. — Suppose, for instance, a definite portion of time 
as an hour, and picture the hour preceding this hour and 
the hour whicli will succeed and so on with successive 
antecedent and subsequent times without limit and the 
picture will be only of an indefinite time ; but when any 
one limited portion of time is considered as bounded by 
another portion it is seen that instead of one portion 
limiting another it really extends it or that the portions 
are self-limited " We can not picture to ourselves time 
any more than we can imagine space. We think it clearly 
as the condition of the existence of images and pictures, 
but not itself as a picture or image." 

Cause and Effect, Self- Cause. — There is "another 
presupposition which is necessary to make experience 
possible, and which is an element far subtler and more 
potent than space and time, because it is their logical 
condition also. This deeper principle is Causality. 

" 1. We regard a thing or object as related to its en- 
vironment as an external existing limit, in which case 
the ground or logical condition is space ; or, 2. We re- 
gard the object as an event or process which consists of 
a series of successive moments with an environment of 
antecedent and subsequent moments ; its ground or pre- 
supposition is time ; or, 3. We may look upon an object 
as the recipient of influences from its environment, or as 
itself imparting influences to its environment. This is 
Causality. 

" The environment and the object relate to each other 



The Chautauquan," March, 1886, p. 324 



20 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

as effect or cause. The environment causes some change 
in the object, which change is its effect ; or the object 
as cause reacts on the environment and produces some 
modilication in that as its effect. The effect is a joint 
product of this interaction between the so-called active 
and passive factors or coefficients. For both are active, 
although one is relatively passive to the other." * 

III. — A plant acts as cause upon its environment, 
the air, producing a change in the air, which change is 
the effect ; the atmosphere in turn acts upon the plant, 
making changes in it ; both are active, though one is 
relatively passive to the other. 

" The principle of causality implies both time and 
space. In order that a cause shall send a stream of in- 
fluence toward an effect, there must be time for the in- 
fluence to pass from the one to the other. Also the idea 
of effect implies the existence of an object external to 
the cause, or the utterance of influence, and in this space 
is presupposed. Space and time are in a certain sense 
included in causality as a higher unity." f 

III. — In order that the sun's rays may heat the sur- 
face of the ground and the atmosphere become of the 
right temperature that the plant may give off oxygen, 
there must be time ; and the fact that the plant is acted 
upon by an external influence implies the existence of 
the plant, and the existence of the plant presupposes 
space. 

" Now, if we examine causality, we shall see that it 
again presupposes a ground deeper than itself — deeper 
than itself as realized in a cause and effect separated into 

* Vol. 17, pp. 302, 303. f Vol. 17, p. 303. 



PRESUPPOSITIONS OF EXPERIENCE. 21 

independent objects. This is the most essential insight 
to obtain in all philosophy. 

" 1. In order that a cause shall send a stream of influ- 
ence over to an effect, it must first separate that portion 
of influence from itself. 

"2. Self -separation is, then, the fundamental pre- 
supposition of the action of causality. Unless the cause 
is a self-separating energy, it can not be conceived as 
acting on another. The action of causality is based on 
self-activity." * 

III. — If there is an effect, there must be a cause of 
that effect. If, for example, a person cut a rose from a 
rose-bush : in order that the act may take place, the per- 
son first separates by an activity of thought and will a 
portion of influence or energy, which is transmitted 
through the arm and hand and through the instrument to 
the rose-bush, and the result is seen, the rose is cut from 
the bush. If one imagines a cause or series of causes 
in the knife, hand, and arm, since there could be made 
an infinite number of divisions or steps in the process, 
the idea of a true cause is not helped but hindered, for 
the thought, the will, the self-activity, a pure energy is 
the cause which moves the arm, hand, knife, and cuts 
the flower. 

" 3. Self- activity is called causa sui to express the 
fact of its relation to causality. It is the infinite form 
of causality in which the cause is its own environment 
— just as space is the infinite condition underlying ex- 
tended things, and time the infinite condition underly- 
ing events. Self- activity as causa sui has the form of 

* Vol. 17, p, 304 



22 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

self -relation, and it is self -relation that characterizes the 
affirmative form of the infinite. Self-relation is inde- 
pendence, while relation-to-others is dependence." * 

III. — The person who cuts the rose, in the preced- 
ing illustration, in the origination of the thought to cut 
the rose knows that he could have created a thought 
not to cut the rose, and in this act of reflection thought 
is its own environment, and in this self -activity is the 
self-relation of thought and its independence ; while 
the rose in its less degree of self-activity shows its de- 
pendence, its relation-to-others in a more marked way. 

" Causa sui, or self -cause, is, properly speaking, the 
principle, par excellence, of philosophy. It is the prin- 
ciple of life, of thought, of mind — the idea of a creative 
activity, and hence also the basis of theology as well as 
of philosophy." f " Self-cause, or eternal energy, is the 
ultimate presupposition of all things and events. Here 
is the necessary ground of the idea of God. It is the 
presupposition of all experience and of all possible ex- 
istence. By the study of the presuppositions of experi- 
ence one becomes certain of the existence of One eter- 
nal Energy which creates and governs the world." $ 

" Causa sui, spontaneous origination of activity, or 
spontaneous energy, is the ultimate presupposition un- 
derlying all objects and each object of experience. 

"We have before us three of the logical conditions 
or presuppositions of existence and experience : 

" 1. Object, environment, space. 

" 2. Event, environment, time. 

" 3. Effect, cause, causa suiP # 

* Vol. 17, p 304. % Vol. 17, p. 306. 

f Vol. 17, p. 304. * Vol. 17, p. 304. 



PRESUPPOSITIONS OF EXPERIENCE. 23 

* (" Take the standpoint of materialistic philosophy, 
for example : matter is the ultimate, the whence and 
whither of all. Matter is thus posited as a universal 
which is the sole origin of all particular existences and 
also the final goal of the same ; hence matter is active, 
giving rise to special existences, and also changing them 
into others with all the method and arrangement which 
we can see in natural laws. For matter must contain in 
it potentially all that comes from it. Hence matter is 
creative, causing to arise in its own general substance 
those particular limitations which constitute the differ- 
ences and individuality of things. It is negative, or de- 
stroyer, in that it annuls the individuality of particular 
things, causing to vanish those limitations which sepa- 
rate or distinguish this thing from that other. Such a 
principle as this matter is assumed to be, which causes 
existences to arise from itself by its own activity upon 
itself and within itself, entirely unconditioned by any 
other existence or energy, is self-determination, and 
therefore analogous to that factor in sensuous knowing 
which was called the ego or self -consciousness — an ac- 
tivity which was universal and devoid of form, and yet 
incessantly productive of forms and destructive of the 
same. All this is implied in the theory of materialism, 
and exists there as separate ideas, only needing to be 
united by inferences." + 

" The unity of space as the logical condition of mat- 
ter, and of time as the logical condition of all change 
and manifestation, prove the unity of the world. The 

* The portion inclosed in marks of parenthesis is not an integral 
part, but inserted to show the application of the preceding prin- 
ciples, f Vol. 10, p. 228. 



24 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

mathematical laws which formulate the nature of space 
and time condition the existence of all the phenomena 
in the world, and make them, all parts of one system, 
and thus give us the right to speak of the aggregate 
of existence under such names as ' world ' or ' uni- 
verse.' 

" This question of the existence of an absolute as 
Creator or as Ruler of the universe hinges on the ques- 
tion of the validity of such comprehensive unities as 
'world' and 'universe.' If such ideas are derived from 
experience, it is argued that they are fictitious unities, 
and do not express positive knowledge, but only our 
ignorance, l our failure to discover, invent, or conceive.' 
For we certainly have not made any complete inventory 
that we may call ' the universe.' 

" Only because we are able to know the logical con- 
ditions of experience are we able to speak of the total- 
ity of all possible experience, and to name it ' world ' 
and ' universe.' Finding unity in these logical condi- 
tions, we predicate it of all particular existence, being 
perfectly assured that nothing will ever exist which does 
not conform to these logical conditions. No extended 
objects will exist or change except according to the con- 
ditions of space and time. No relations between phe- 
nomena will arise except through causality, and all caus- 
ality will originate in causa sui, or self-activity. . . . 

" How does one know that things are not self -exist- 
ent already, and therefore in no need of a Creator ? If 
this question still remains in the mind, it must be an- 
swered again and again by referring to the necessary 
unity in the nature of the conditions of existence — 
space, time, and causal influence, based on self-cause. 



PRESUPPOSITIONS OF EXPERIENCE. 25 

The unity of space and the dependence of all matter 
upon it preclude the self -existence of any material body. 
Each is a part, and depends on all the rest. Presuppo- 
sitions of experience can only be seen by reflection 
upon the conditions of experience. The feeble-minded, 
who can not analyze their experience nor give careful 
attention to its factors, can not see this necessity. In- 
deed, few strong minds can see these necessary presup- 
positions at first. But all, even the most feeble in intel- 
lect, have these presuppositions as an element of their 
experience, whether able to abstract them and see them 
as special objects or not." *) 

Dependent and Independent Being;- — " Let us vary 
the mode and manner of expressing this insight for the 
sake of additional clearness. First, let us ask what is 
the nature of self-existent being— of independent be- 
ings, whether there be one or more, 

" 1. It is clear that all beings are dependent or in- 
dependent, or else have, in some way, phases to which 
both predicates may apply." f 

III. — Any material thing of the inorganic world is 
dependent and forms only a part of an aggregate. So, 
too, in the organic world a plant is dependent upon its 
surroundings for food-material, and also, as a plant, only 
becomes complete in the species. An animal has more 
independence than a plant, but only sufficient to have 
the power of reproducing the external world in an un- 
conscious way, and preserving identity in species. In 
man there is independence in a more complete form. 
He presents the two phases — dependence upon his en- 



* Vol. 17, pp. 305, 30G. f Vol. 17, p. 306, 307. 



26 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

vironment and complete independence in the freedom 
of thought, of will. 

" 2. The dependent being is clearly not a whole or 
totality ; it implies something else — some other being on 
which it depends. It can not depend on a dependent 
being, although it may stand in relation to another de- 
pendent being as another link of its dependence. All 
dependence implies the independent being as the source 
of support. Take away the independent being, and you 
remove the logical condition of the dependent being, 
because without something to depend upon there can be 
no dependent being. If one suggests a mutual relation 
of dependent beings, then still the whole is independent, 
and this independence furnishes the ground of the de- 
pendent parts." * 

III. — Since inorganic things are determined by 
their environment in a greater degree than they are 
self-determined, they are only dependent parts of a 
system ; man in the freedom of his thought and will 
transcends and modifies his environment and is inde- 
pendent. 

" 3. The dependent being, or links of being, no 
matter how numerous they are, make up one being 
with the being on which they depend and belong to 
it." f 

III. — The earth shows dependence in all its parts — 
inorganic nature and organic are interdependent : the 
world manifesting and revealing thought and will, and 
the Creator, make an independent whole. 

"4. All being is, therefore, either independent, or 

* Vol. 17, p. 307. f v °l» 17. p. 307, 



PRESUPPOSITIONS OF EXPERIENCE. 27 

forms a part of an independent being. Dependent be- 
ing can be explained only by the independent being 
from which it receives its nature." * 

III. — The root, stem, or leaves of the rose-bush can 
only be explained by explaining the nature and office of 
the whole plant ; the plant only by explaining the spe- 
cies ; and the species only by comparison of the activity 
of the plant with other manifestations of self -activity. 
Man and the nature of finite thought can only be ex- 
plained by an understanding and explanation of the na- 
ture of absolute thought.^ 

" 5. The nature or determinations of any being, its 
marks, properties, qualities, or attributes, arise through 
its own activity or through the activity of another be- 
ing." f 

III. — The nature, properties, or qualities of a crystal 
in the mineral world are to a degree determined by the 
temperature, moisture, pressure, etc. to which it is sub- 
jected, or " the qualities of crystals depend directly on 
the forces of the ultimate molecules or particles of mat- 
ter" ; thus a thing in inorganic nature is partly deter- 
mined by activity without itself. Man, in the process 
of his growth and development, in contact with the ex- 
ternal world of things, with other individuals, and with 
institutions of society, determines through his own ac- 
tivity his qualities or attributes ; the qualities or attri- 
butes of God are completely determined by His own 
activity. 

" 6. If its nature is derived from another, it is a de- 
pendent being. The independent being is therefore 

* Vol. 17, p. 307. f Vol. 17, p. 307. 



28 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

determined only through its own activity — it is self-de- 
termined." * 

III. — Man only of all finite beings exercises con- 
scious self-determination ; Absolute Being in His com- 
plete self -activity is perfectly self-determined. 

" 7: The nature of self existent beings, whether one 
or many, is therefore self-determination. This result 
we see is identical with that which we found in our in- 
vestigation of the underlying presupposition of influence 
or causal relation. There must be self-separation, or else 
no influence can pass over to another object. The cause 
must first act in itself before its energy causes an effect 
in something else. It must therefore be essentially cause 
and effect in itself, or causa sui, meaning self-cause or 
self-effect." f 

Being not Empty Form. — " We should note partic- 
ularly that self-activity, or self-determination, which we 
have found as the original form of all beings is not a 
simple, empty form of existence, devoid of all particu- 
larity, but that it involves three important distinctions: 
Self-antithesis of determiner and determined, or of self- 
active and self-passive, or of self as subject of activity 
and self as object of activity. These distinctions may 
be otherwise expressed : (a) As the primordial form of 
all particularity ; (b) the subject, or self -active, or deter- 
miner, regarded by itself is the possibility of any and 
all determination, and is thus the generic or universal 
and the primordial form of all that is general or univer- 
sal ; hence the presupposition of all classification ; (c) 
the unity of these two phases of universality and partic- 

* Vol. 17, p. 307. f Vol. 17, p. 307. 



PRESUPPOSITIONS OF EXPERIENCE. 29 

ularity constitutes individuality, and is the primordial 
form of all individuality." * 

III. — The thought of this paragraph can not be eas- 
ily illustrated because in it is involved the process of 
creative thought. In Chapter V will be found an expo- 
sition of this process of creative thought. 

An inadequate illustration may be taken from the 
thought and activity of every-day life of an individual, 
as, a man makes a journey ; the self as subject originates 
the thought of making the journey ; the self on the will 
side puts the thought into formal action and so renders 
the thought real in the will, or makes the self as object ; 
and the thought, the universal, uniting with the partic- 
ular through the specific act of the will, constitutes a 
phase of individuality. 

(" There is here an error of reflection very prevalent 
in our time, which does not identify these distinctions 
of universal, particular, and individual in the absolute 
existence, but calls this absolute or self-existent being 
' the unconditioned.' It thinks it as entirely devoid of 
conditions, as simply the negation of the finite. Hence, 
it regards the absolute as entirely devoid of distinc- 
tions. Since there is nothing to think in that which 
has no distinctions, such an absolute is pronounced 
' unthinkable,' inconceivable, or unknowable. The 
error in this form of reflection lies in the confusion 
which it makes between the environment and the un- 
derlying presupposition. It thinks the antithesis of 
object and environment, of object and cause, but fails 
to ascend to self-limit and caiosa sui as the ultimate 



Vol. 17, p. 308. 



30 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

presupposition and logical condition of object and en- 
vironment." * 

" Any independent, or self-existent being is a self- 
distinguishing being, and not a mere empty ' uncondi- 
tioned ' without attributes or qualities. This is so much 
in favor of theism, and against pantheism. For theism 
sustains the doctrine of a ' living ' (self active) God 
against pantheism which holds to a transcendental unity 
that pervades all, and yet is nothing special, but only a 
void in which all characteristics are annulled, and hence 
is neither subject nor object, good nor evil, and is un- 
conscious. 

" It is, moreover, a presumption in favor of Christian 
theism, because the latter lays stress on the personality 
of God. Self-activity is self-distinction, and has many 
stages or degrees of realization. It may be life, as in 
the plant or animal; or feeling and locomotion, as in 
animals ; or reason, as in man ; or, finally, absolute per- 
sonality, as in God. In the plant we have reaction 
against environment ; the plant takes up its nourishment 
from without, and transmutes it into vegetable cells and 
adds them to its substance. In feeling, the animal ex- 
hibits a higher form of self -activity, inasmuch as it re- 
produces within itself an impression of its environment, 
while in locomotion it determines for itself its own 
space. In reason, man reaches a still higher form of 
self-activity — the pure internality which makes for itself 
an environment of ideas and institutions. Bat in these 
realms of experience we do not find pure self-activity in 
its complete development. 

* Vol. 17, p. 308. 



PRESUPPOSITIONS OF EXPERIENCE. 31 

" Philosophy looks beyond for an ultimate presuppo- 
sition, and finds the perfect self-activity presupposed as 
the person id God. Looking at the world in time and 
space we see that whatever has extension is co ordinate 
to other spatial existences and, therefore, limited by 
them. All things in space are, therefore, mutually in- 
terdependent to the degree that they are conditioned by 
space. Hence, they all presuppose one independent 
Being whose self-activity originates them. 

" Moreover, in the phases of change, succession, or 
motion, all things in the world presuppose, as time-exist- 
ences, the mutual dependence that reduces them to a 
unity dependent on a self -existent whose form is eter- 
nity. Thus the world in time and space presupposes as 
its origin a First Cause whose characteristics or attri- 
butes are such as follow as consequences from perfect 
self -activity. Perfect will, perfect knowing, perfect life, 
are implied in the perfect self -distinction of a First Cause. 
These implications, it is true, do not appear at first. 
Only after the thinking power has trained itself to look 
into the presuppositions of its experience does it begin 
to discover these wonderful conclusions. Then it grows 
in this power constantly by exercising its thoughts on 
divine themes. 

44 To the person who has never discovered the presup- 
positions that underlie experience, there is no necessary 
unity to the world and, consequently, no necessity for a 
God. He may, nevertheless, surrender his intellect to 
faith and adopt a belief in God. But if he persists in 
' thinking for himself,' he will reach atheistic conclu- 
sions at this stage of thought. For ignoring the unity 
which time and space give to the dependent existences 



32 INTRODUCTION TO TIIE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of the world, lie will take for granted their independ- 
ence. If objects in the world all possess self -existence 
just as they are, then, of course, they are independent 
beings, and do not presuppose one absolute independent 
Being. This is atheism. But it can not stand the test 
of reflection. 

" Reflection discovers that extension in space and 
sequence in time involve mutual dependence through- 
out the universe. At this stage of thought he has 
left atheism and arrived at pantheism. For time and 
space are not forms of personality, but only of ab- 
stract unity and, hence, although they make atheism 
impossible they do not necessitate theism. The idea of 
causality followed out into the conception of self-activ- 
ity and self-determination corrects the pantheistic result 
and arrives at theism." *) 

Principle with which to examine the World. — 
" Every object of experience, then, involves as correla- 
tives infinite space, infinite time, and self-cause, or spon- 
taneous energy. These correlatives are necessarily 
thought as conditions which render the existence of the 
object of experience possible. If the object of experi- 
ence possesses reality, those conditions possess reality, 
because it is their reality that this object manifests." f 
" Each and every existence, then, is a self-determined 
being, or else some phase or phenomenon dependent on 
self-determined being. Here we have our principle with 
which to examine the world and judge concerning its 
beings. Whatever depends on space and time, and pos- 
sesses external existence, in the form of an object con- 

* " The Chautauquan," May, 1886, pp. 437, 438. f Vol. 19, p. 197. 



PRESUPPOSITIONS OF EXPERIENCE. 33 

ditioned by environment, has net the form of self-exist- 
ence, but is necessarily a phase or manifestation of the 
self-determination of some other being. If we are able 
to discover beings in the world that manifest self-activ- 
ity, we shall know that they are in possession of inde- 
pendence, at least in a degree ; or, in other words, that 
they manifest self existence. When we have found the 
entire compass of any being in the world, we are certain 
that we have within it the form of self-activity as its 
essence." * 

" The ground of Aristotle's identification of self-de- 
termination, or of energy which moves but is not moved, 
with reason or thinking being, becomes clear when we 
consider that this self-distinction which constitutes the 
nature of self-determination, or causa sui, is subject 
and its own object, and this in its perfect form must be 
self-consciousness, while any lower manifestation of self- 
activity will be recognized as life — that of the plant or 
of the animal. In the plant there is manifestation of 
life wherein the individual seed develops out of itself 
into a plant and arrives again at seeds, but not at the 
same seed — only at seeds of the same species. So the 
individual plant does not include self-determination, but 
only manifests it as the moving principle of the entire 
process. The mere animal, as brute animal, manifests 
self-determination more adequately than the plant ; for 
he has feeling and locomotion, besides nutrition and re- 
production. But as mere animal he does not make him- 
self his own object, and hence the causa sui which is 
manifested in him is not included within his conscious- 

* Vol. 17, pp. 307, 308. 



34 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ness, but is manifested only as species. Man can make 
Lis feeling in its entirety his object by becoming con- 
scious, not only of time, space, and the other presuppo- 
sitions, but especially of self-activity or original first- 
cause, and in this he arrives at the knowledge of the 
ego and becomes self-conscious. The presupposition of 
man as a developing individuality is the perfect individ- 
uality of the Absolute Keason, or God." * 

* Vol. 17, pp. 309, 310. 



CHAPTER III. 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 



The "World: Self- Activity shown in Inorganic Forms— Organic ; Plants, 
Animals, Man. 

The World a Manifestation of Self- Activity, of Self - 
Determination, of the Creator. — In the preceding chap- 
ter " we have considered time and space as grounds of 
existence of material things. We have considered the 
principle of causality as the form in which all experience 
is rendered possible. Looking at its presupposition, we 
have seen that self-activity, or causa sui, alone makes 
possible any and all influence of one thing upon another. 
There must be self-separation of energy or influence as 
a condition of its transference from the environment to 
the object, or from any one object to another. This 
self -separation, or self -activity, is the basis of causality, 
and hence the basis of all things and phenomena in the 
world. ... 

" Being assured of the necessary existence of individ- 
uality or free self-determination as the form of all total- 
ities,* we may now look for beings which manifest the 
Divine Self- Activity." f 

* " Totality as here used does not mean quantitative totality, but 
qualitative — i. e., independent being.'' 
f Vol. 17, pp. 343, 344, 345. 



36 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

"The idea of self-activity is the source of our 
thought of God. If oue lacked this idea of self-activity 
and could not attain it, all attempt to teach him divine 
truth would be futile. He could not form in his mind, 
if he could be said to have a mind, the essential charac- 
teristic idea of God ; he could not think God as a 
Creator of the world, or as self -existent apart from the 
world. If the doctrine were revealed and taught to him, 
and he learned to repeat the words in which it is ex- 
pressed, yet in his consciousness he would conceive only 
a limited effect, a dead result, and no living God. But 
the hypothesis of a consciousness without the idea of 
self -activity implicit in it as the presupposition of all its 
knowing, and especially of its self-consciousness, is a 
mere hypothesis, without possibility of being a fact." * 

Inorganic Things. — " A general survey of the world 
discovers that there is interaction among its parts. This 
is the verdict of science, as the systematic form of hu- 
man experience. In the form of gravitation we under- 
stand that each body depends upon every other body, 
and the annihilation of a particle of matter in a body 
would cause a change in that body which would affect 
every other body in the physical universe. Even grav- 
itation, therefore, is a manifestation of the whole uni- 
verse in each part of it, although it is not a manifesta- 
tion which exists for that part, because the part does 
not know it. There are other forms wherein the whole 
manifests itself in each part of it, as, for example, in the 
phenomena of light, heat, and possibly in magnetism and 
electricity. These forms of manifestation of the exter- 

* Vol. 17, pp. 310, 311. 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 37 

nal world upon an individual object are destructive to 
the individuality of the object. If the nature of a 
thing is stamped upon it from without, it is an element 
only, and not a self ; it is dependent, and belongs to that 
on which it depends. It does not possess itself, but be- 
longs to that which makes it, and which gives evidence 
of ownership by continually modifying it." * 

u Atoms, if atoms exist as they are conceived in the 
atomic theory, can not be true individuals, for they pos- 
sess attraction and repulsion, and by either of these 
forces express their dependence on others, and thus sub- 
merge their individuality in the mass with which they 
are connected by attraction or sundered by repulsion. 
Distance in space changes the properties of the atom- 
its attraction and repulsion are conceived as depending 
on distance from other atoms, and its union with other 
atoms develops new qualities and conceals or changes 
the old qualities. Hence the environment is essential 
to the atomic individuality — and this means the denial 
of its individuality. If the environment is a factor, 
then the individuality is joint product, and the atom is 
not an individual, but only a constituent. 

" Inorganic being does not possess individuality for 
itself. A mountain is not an individual in the sense 
that a tree is. It is an aggregate of substances, but not 
an organic unity. The unity of place gives certain 
peculiarities and idiosyncrasies, but the mountain is an 
aggregate of materials, and its conditions are an aggre- 
gate of widely differing temperatures, degrees of illu- 
mination, moisture, etc." f 



* Vol. 14, p. 227. f Vol 19, p. 200. 

5 



38 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Organisms. — " In an organism each part is recipro- 
cally means and end to all the other parts — all parts are 
mediated through each. 

" Mere aggregates are not individuals, hut aggregates 
wherein the parts are at all times in mutual reaction 
with the other parts through and by means of the whole, 
are individuals. The individual stands in relation to 
other individuals aud to the inorganic world. It is the 
manifestation of energy acting as conservative of its 
own individuality, and destructive of other individual- 
ities or inorganic aggregates that form its environment. 
It assimilates other beings to itself and digests them, or 
imposes its own form on them and makes them organic 
parts of itself — or, on the other hand, it eliminates por- 
tions from itself, returning to the inorganic what has 
been a part of itself. 

" Individuality, therefore, is not a mere thing, but 
an energy manifesting itself in things. In the case of 
the plant there is this unity of energy, but the unity 
does not exist for itself in the form of feeling. The 
animal feels, and, in feeling, the organic energy exists 
for itself, all parts coming to a unity in this feeling, and 
realizing an individuality vastly superior to the individ- 
uality manifested in the plant." * 

Individuality of Plants. — " The plant grows and 
realizes by its form or shape some phase or phases of 
the organic energy that constitutes the individuality of 
the plant. Roots, twigs, buds, blossoms, fruits, and 
seeds, all together, manifest or express that organic 
energy, but they lack thorough mutual dependence, as 

* Vol. 19, p. 201. 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 39 

compared with the animal who feels his unity in each 
part or limb. The individuality of the plant is com- 
paratively an aggregate of individualities, while the 
animal is a real unity in each part through feeling, and 
hence there is no such independence in the parts of the 
animal as in the plant." * 

"Individuality begins with the power of reaction 
and modification of external surroundings. In the case 
of the plant, the reaction is real, but not also ideal. 
The plant acts upon its food and digests it, or assimilates 
it, and imposes its form on that which it draws within 
its organism. It does not, however, reproduce within 
itself the externality as that external exists for itself. 
It does not form within itself an idea, or even a feeling 
of that which is external to it. Its participation in the 
external world is only that of real modification of it or 
through it ; either the plant digests the external, or the 
external limits it, and prevents its growth, so that where 
one begins the other ceases. Hence, it is that the ele- 
ments — the matter of which the plant is composed, that 
which it has assimilated even — still retains a large degree 
of foreign power or force, a large degree of externality 
which the plant has not been able to annul or to digest. 
The plant-activity subdues its food, changes its shape 
and its place, subordinates it to its use ; but what the 
matter brings with it, and still retains of the world be- 
yond the plant, does not exist for the plant ; the plant 
can not read or interpret the rest of the universe from 
that small portion of it which it has taken up within 
its own organism. And yet the history of the universe 

* Vol. 19, p. 201. 



40 INTRODUCTION TO TIIE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

is impressed on each particle of matter, as well within 
the plant as outside of it, and it could be understood 
were there capacities for recognizing it. 

"The reaction of the life of the plant upon the 
external world is not sufficient to constitute a fixed 
abiding individuality. With each accretion there is 
some change of particular individuality. Every growth 
to a plant is by the sprouting out of new individuals — 
new plants — a ceaseless multiplication of individuals, 
and not the preservation of the same individual. The 
species is preserved, but not the particular individual. 
Each limb, each twig, even each leaf is a new individual, 
which grows out from the previous growth as the first 
sprout grew from the seed. Each part furnishes a soil 
for the next. When a plant no longer sends out new 
individuals we say it is dead. The life of the plant is 
only a life of nutrition. Nutrition is only an activity 
of preservation of the general form of new individuals ; 
it is only the life of the species, and not the life of the 
permanent individual." * 

III. — The phases of growth in the oak tree — the 
acorn, the little plant, the sapling, the full-grown oak — 
show the individuality of the tree ; in all these phases, 
the activity of the tree manifests itself in modifying its 
surroundings and in assimilating them to a certain 
extent. Because, in the process of acting upon and 
taking in its external surroundings, the oak tree changes 
that portion of the external world which is impressed 
upon it, but does not know that change, the action of 
the external world upon the tree and the reaction of the 

* Vol. 14, pp. 227, 228. 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 41 

tree upon the surroundings is real but not ideal. The 
individuality of one oak tree is not permanent but con- 
sists of a series of changes, and even the one oak tree 
may die and a new one take its place. The extent of 
the activity of the oak is shown only in the species. 

Individuality of Animals. — " Feeling, sense-per- 
ception, and locomotion characterize the individuality 
of the animal, although he retains the special powers 
which made the plant an organic being, The plant 
could assimilate or digest ; that is to say, it could react 
on its environment and impress it with its own form, 
making the inorganic into vegetable- cells and adding 
them to its own structure. Feeling, especially in the 
form of sense-perception, is the process of reproducing 
the environment within the organism in an ideal form. 

"Sense-perception thus stands in contrast to the 
vegetative power of assimilation or nutrition, which is 
the highest form of energy in the plant. Nutrition is 
a subordinate energy in the animal, while it is the su- 
preme energy of the plant. Nutrition relates to its 
environment only negatively and destructively in the 
act of assimilating it, or else it adds mechanically to the 
environment by separating and excreting from itself 
what has become inorganic. But feeling, even as it 
exists in the most elementary forms of sense-perception, 
can reproduce the environment ideally ; it can form for 
itself, within, a modification corresponding to the energy 
of the objects that make up its environment. 

" Sentient being stands in reciprocal action with its 
environment, but it seizes the impression received from 
without and adds to it by its own activity, so as to 
reconstruct for itself the external object. It receives 



42 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

an impression, and is so far passive to the action of its 
environment ; but it reacts on this by forming within 
itself a counterpart to the impression out of its own 
energy. The animal individuality is an energy that 
can form limits within itself. On receiving an impres- 
sion from the environment, it forms limits to its own 
energy commensurate with the impression it receives, 
and thus frames for itself a perception, or an internal 
copy of the object. It is not a copy so much as an esti- 
mate or measure effected by producing a limitation 
within itself similar to the impression it has received. 
Its own state, as thus limited to reproduce the impres- 
sion, is its idea or perception of the external environ- 
ment as acting upon it. 

" The plant receives impressions from without, but 
its power of reaction is extremely limited, and does not 
rise to feeling. The beginnings of such reaction in 
plants as develops into feeling in animals are studied by 
intelligent biologists with the liveliest interest, for in 
this reaction we see the ascent of individuality through 
a discrete degree — the ascent from nutrition to feel- 
ing. 

" Nutrition is a process of destruction of the individ- 
uality of the foreign substance taken up from the envi- 
ronment, and likewise a process of impressing on it a 
new individuality, that of the vegetative form, or the 
nutritive soul, as Aristotle calls it. Feeling is a process 
of reproducing within the individuality, by self-limita- 
tion or self-determination, a form that is like the exter- 
nal energy that has produced an impression upon it. 
The sentient being shapes itself into the impression, or 
reproduces the impression, and thus perceives the char- 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 43 

acter of the external energy by the nature of its own 
effort required to reproduce the impression." * 

III. — A dog, in common with the oak, has the 
power of assimilating a portion of his environment, but 
the dog has also feeling, sense-perception, and locomo- 
tion. With the dog, the reaction upon the external 
world is not only real, but also ideal ; that is, the dog 
touches, tastes, smells, hears, and sees, and in these acts 
of sense-perception, he, by his own activity, reproduces 
that portion of the external world whose activity im- 
pressed his own activity ; or, to be more specitic, the 
dog sees a tree — an impression of the tree upon the 
activity of the dog through the physical organ, the eye, 
and the energy of the dog limits and measures within 
himself a copy of the tree, and in so doing he limits 
himself and sees an object external to himself. But in 
this act of sense-perception the dog sees the object as 
one particular object, and not as one of a class of objects. 
• Nutritive and Sentient Processes. — "In the two 
forms of the reaction of energy, or individuality, which 
have been discussed as nutrition and feeling, the former 
draws the object within itself and destroys its objective 
form, while in feeling the individuality recoils from 
the attack made on the organism, and reproduces its 
symbolic equivalent. Both of these forms find the 
occasion of action in the contact with the external. 
Without conjunction, without limitation of the individ- 
uality by the object, there arises neither nutrition nor 
feeling. This mutual limitation is the reduction of the 
two, the subject and object, to mutual dependence, and 

* Vol. 19, pp. 201-203. 



44 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

hence it is the destruction of individuality so far as this 
dependence exists. By the act of assimilation the veg- 
etative energy reasserts its own independence and indi- 
viduality by annulling the individuality of the object. 
The sentient process, on the other hand, reasserts its 
independence by escaping from the continuance of the 
impression from without, and by reproducing for itself 
a similar limitation through its own freedom or spon- 
taneity. It elevates the real limit, by which it is made 
dependent on an external object, into an ideal limit that 
depends on its own free act. Thus both nutrition and 
feeling are manifestations of self -identity, in which the 
energy acts for the preservation of its individuality 
against submersion in another." * 

" The difference between a nutritive process and a 
perceptivo or sentient process is one of degree, but a 
discrete degree. Both processes are reactions on what 
is foreign ; but the nutritive is a real process, destruct- 
ive of the foreign object, while the sentient is an ideal 
or reproductive process that does not affect the foreign 
object. The nutritive is thus the opposite of the sen- 
tient ; it destroys and assimilates, the latter reproduces. 
Perception is objective, a self-determination in the form 
of the object — it transforms the subject into the object ; 
nutrition is subjective in that it transmutes the object 
into the subject and leaves no object. Perception pre- 
serves its own individuality while reproducing the indi- 
viduality of the external, for it limits itself by its own 
energy in reproducing the form of the object. 

" For the reason that feeling or perception measures 

* Vol. 19, pp. 204, 205. 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 45 

off, as it were, on its own organic energy — which exists for 
it in the feeling of self — the amount and kind of energy 
required to produce the impression made on it from with- 
out, it follows that sense-perception is not only a reception 
of impressions, but also an act of introspection. By intro- 
spection it interprets the cause or occasion of 'the impres- 
sion that is felt. Feeling arises only when the impres- 
sion made on the organism is reproduced again within 
the self — only when it recognizes the external cause by 
seeing in and through its own energy the energy that has 
limited it. The degree of objectivity (or the ability to 
perceive the reality of the external power) is measured 
by the degree of introspection or the degree of clearness 
in which it perceives the amount and limit of the inter- 
nal energy required to reproduce the impression." * 

Human Individuality. — " On this scale of degrees 
we rise from plant to animal, and from animal to man. 
The individuality of each lies in its energy. The en- 
ergy of the plant is expended in assimilating the ex- 
ternal ; that of the animal in assimilating and repro- 
ducing ; that of man in assimilating, reproducing, and 
self -producing or creating. The discrete degree that 
separates the plant from the animal is measured by the 
distance between destroying and reconstructing ; the 
difference between the animal and the man is measured 
by the distance between reproducing and self-produc- 
ing, or, in another form of statement, it is the difference 
in two kinds of perception — the perception of object as 
particular, and the perception of object as universal. 

It is comparatively easy to recognize the difference 

* Vol. 19, p. 203. 



46 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

between nutrition and perception ; indeed, one would 
say that the difficult part is the recognition of the es- 
sential identity of their energies. On the contrary, the 
identify of sense perception and thought is readily ac- 
knowledged, but their profound difference is not seen 
without careful attention." * 

III. — The life of the tree is shown in processes of 
absorption, assimilation, and preservation of the species ; 
the dog has the added powers of feeling and locomo- 
tion and the perceiving of objects as individual particu- 
lar objects. The man in seeing the same tree which 
the dog sees, not only sees the tree as a particular oak, 
but also at the same time sees that he belongs to one 
class of objects and the tree to another class ; or, while 
the dog sees the particular the man sees the universal 
in the particular. The extent to which man consciously 
and reflectively recognizes different classes of objects 
and their nature and characteristics, depends upon the 
degree of culture to which he has attained. The per- 
ceptive-process and the thought-process of man are fur- 
ther considered in Chapter IV, Sections I, IV, V, 
and YI. 

" These general or universal objects are not mere 
classes or abstractions, fictions of the mind for genera 
and species, but they stand for generic processes in the 
world — such processes in the world as abide while their 
products come into being and pass away. The oak be- 
fore me is the product of a power that manifests itself 
in successive stages, as acorn, sapling, tree, and crop of 
acorns, etc., these stages being successive and partial, 

* Vol. 19, pp. 203, 204 



PHILOSOPHY OP NATURE. 47 

while the energy is the unity whence proceed all of 
these phases through its action on the environment. 
The energy is a generic process, and whatever reality 
the particular existence may get from it is borrowed 
from its reality. The reality of this acorn is derived 
from the reality of organic energy of the oak on which 
it grew. The reality of that organic energy is at least 
equal to all the reality that has proceeded from it." * 

* Vol. 19, p. 204 



CHAPTER IV. 

MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 

Man is Self- Activity, Self-Consciousness — Channels of Development of 
Activity : Feeling, Sense-perception, Representation, Understanding, 
Eeason, Emotions, "Will. 

CONSCIOUSNESS. 

" The attempts to preserve individuality which we 
see in nutrition and feeling, do not succeed in obtaining 
perfect independence. Both these activities, as reaction 
upon the environment, depend on the continued pres- 
ence of the environment. When the assimilation is 
complete the reaction ceases, and there must be new in- 
teraction with the environment before the process be- 
gins again. Hence, its individuality requires a perma- 
nent interaction with external conditions, and the plant 
and vegatative process is not a complete or perfect indi- 
viduality. It is not entirely independent. Its process 
involves a correlative existence, an inorganic world for 
its food." * 

" The defect in plant life was that there was neither 
identity of individualty in space nor identity in time. 
The growth of the plant destroyed the individuality of 
the seed, so that it was evanescent in time ; it served 
only as the starting-point for new individualities, which 

* Vol. 19, p. 205. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 49 

likewise, in turn, served again the same purpose ; and 
so its growth in space was a departure from itself as 
individual." * 

III. — In the growth of an oak tree no stage of its 
life is complete ; in each succeeding period of time the 
oak, in each different aspect of growth, destroys the pre- 
ceding appearance and size, and therefore the oak has 
not permanence as an individual — it lacks identity in 
time; also the oak produces new plants from itself, 
which again produce new oaks, and in this continuous 
growth of individuals from the oak the lack of perma- 
nence of the oak as regards space is seen. 

"The animal is a preservation of individuality as 
regards space. He returns into himself in the form 
of feeling or sensibility ; but as regards time, it is not 
so, feeling being limited to the present. Without a 
higher activity than feeling, there is no continuity of 
individuality in the animal any more than in the 
plant. Each new moment is a new beginning to a 
being that has feeling but not memory. 

" Thus the individuality of mere feeling, although a 
far more perfect realization of individuality than that 
found in plant life, is yet, after all, not a continuous 
individuality for itself, but only for the species. 

" In spite of the ideal self-activity which appertains 
to feeling, even in sense-perception, only the species 
lives in the animal, and the individual dies, unless there 
be higher forms of activity," f 

III. — Since, through his power of feeling, a dog re- 
tains his unity and returns into himself, and since he 

* Vol. 14, p. 231. f Vol. 14, p. 231. 



50 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

shows a degree of permanence under change, he pre- 
serves his individuality in space, but the life of the 
dog is limited to the present; he shows the power of 
representation and recollection to a degree, but not that 
of memory — true memory, the power which is known 
by the ability to use language, the power of mind 
which retains objects as classes. 

" Memory," and its relation to the use of language, 
is further developed in Sections II and III of the pres- 
ent chapter. 

" The being which perceives or feels is a self -ac- 
tivity in a higher sense than is manifested in plant life, 
but it is not its own object in the forms of mere feel- 
ing, or sense-perception, or recollection, or fancy. In- 
dividuality is persistence under change, self-preserva- 
tion in the presence of alien forces, and self -objectivity. 
It is self-determination, or free causal energy — causa 
sui. To have an object, a particular, therefore, is not 
to be conscious of individuality, either of one's own or 
of another's. An individuality that does not exist for 
itself has no personal identity. When the self-activity 
in reproducing an impression perceives at the same time 
its own freedom or causal energy, then it becomes con- 
scious of self." * 

III. — While each — an oak and a dog — presents 
phases of individuality, in man is seen true individu- 
ality. In common with the dog, through the power of 
feeling, he preserves his unity of individuality in space ; 
he also retains his individuality in time; through all 
changes and attacks of external forces the individuality 

♦Vol. 17, p. 353. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 51 

remains. Man, although, conditioned by time and 
space, is not limited to the " here and now," but by the 
power of memory he can live in the centuries and ages 
that are past, and by the power of imagination and in- 
sight of the reason he can look into the future. Man 
can also look in upon his own mind and perceive how 
the mind acts and learn the nature of thought and see 
how the activity of thought is related to other phases of 
activity in the universe; in this power he shows his 
self-activity, his self-determination, his freedom in mak- 
ing the self as object of thought ; and when the freely 
determined thought goes out in action, man is making 
himself real through his will, or man is a self -realizing 
being. The phase of individuality shown in the will is 
treated in Section VIII of the present chapter. 

(Real, Potential, Actual. — " The immediate object 
before the senses undergoes change ; the real becomes 
potential, and that which was potential becomes real. 
Without the potentiality we could have had no change. 
At first we are apt to consider the real as the entire ex- 
istence, and to ignore the potential ; but the potential 
will not be treated thus. Whatever a thing can be- 
come is as valid as what it is already. The properties 
of a thing by which it exists for us are its relations to 
other beings, and hence are rather its deficiencies than 
its being per se. The sharpness in the acid is the hun- 
ger of the same for alkali ; the sharper it is the louder 
the call for alkali. Thus the very concretenejss of a 
thing is rather the process of its potentialities. ... In 
change, the real is being acted upon by the potential 
under the form of " outside influences." The pyramid 
is not air, but the air continually acts upon it, and the 



52 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

pyramid is in a continual process of decomposition ; its 
potentiality is continually exhibiting its nature. We 
know by seeing a thing undergo change what its po- 
tentialities are. In the process of change is manifested 
the activity of the potentialities which are thus negative 
to it. If a thing had no negative it would not change. 
The real is nothing but the surface upon which the po- 
tential writes its nature ; it is the field of strife between 
the potentialities. The real persists in existence 
through the potential which is in continual process with 
it. Thus we are led to regard the product of the two as 
constant. This we call actuality. . . . 

" The highest aim is toward perfection ; and this is 
pursued in the canceling of the finite, partial, or incom- 
plete, by adding to it its other or complement — that 
which it lacks of the Total or Perfect. Since this com- 
plement is the potential, and since the potential is and 
can be the only agent that acts upon and modifies the 
real, it follows that all process is pursuant of the high- 
est aim ; and since the actual is the process itself, it 
follows that the actual is the realization of the best or 
of the rational." *) 

" The sense-perception of the mere animal differs 
from that of the human being in this : The human 
being knows himself as subject that sees the object, but 
does not separate himself, as universal, from the special 
act of seeing. To know that I am I is to know the 
most general of objects. Consciousness, which is known 
by the ability to use language, and distinguishes the 
brute and human, begins when one can seize the pure 

* Vol. 1, pp. 239, 240. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 53 

universal in the presence of immediate objects here and 
now." * " The so-called faculties of the mind rise in 
a scale, beginning with feeling. Each higher activity 
is distinguished from the . one below it by the circum- 
stance that it sees not only the object which was seen 
by the lower faculty, but also the form of the activity of 
that faculty. Each new faculty, therefore, is a new stage 
of self-consciousness." f " The degrees of conscious- 
ness are various, and differ through the completeness 
with which they grasp the determinations of the Ego." % 
" Self-consciousness is therefore the basis of all knowl- 
edge ; for all predication — from the emptiest assertion, 
\ this is now ' — up to the richest statement involving the 
ultimate relation of the world to God." # 

III. — As in the example in the preceding chapter, 
the dog in seeing the tree sees an object as a particular 
object, and he gives no evidence that he recognizes the 
tree as belonging to a different class of objects from 
himself ; but the child, in learning the word tree in con- 
nection with the object, begins the process of recognition 
of classes of objects and perceives, though not at first in 
a conscious, reflective way, that the one word " tree " 
means any tree and that he himself is different from 
the tree. In this act of simultaneous recognition of the 
self, the universal, and of the object, self-consciousness 
begins. 

Each successive addition of knowledge of objects of 
the external world and their relations, involving at the 
same time a greater knowledge of the universal through 

* Vol. 14, p. 234. % Vol. 10, p. 229. 

t Vol. 19, p. 206. * Vol. 10, p. 227. 



54 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the powers of feeling, knowing, and willing, is a new 
stage of self-consciousness in the child, youth, and man. 
The degree of self-consciousness attained by the child, 
youth, or man depends upon the extent to which he can 
see the universal in whatever line he may be working 
and thinking ; experience in the lines of physical indus- 
try, business, and professional life, and the growth and 
development obtained from the contact and relation of 
one mind with another and with absolute thought as in- 
terpreted in science, art, and religion are new stages of 
self-consciousness. 

Care should be taken to avoid the thought of " doub- 
leness " in reference to consciousness. Consciousness 
is not something apart and different (as " a light," " a 
witness," " a knowledge of the states of mind," " a pow- 
er ") from self-activity, from the mind, but is different 
stages or degrees of the one and the same activity. 

Channels of Development of Consciousness. — " Ex- 
perience is a complex affair, made up of two elements — 
one element being that furnished by the senses, and the 
other by the mind itself. Time and space, as conditions 
of all existence in the world and of all experience, can 
not be learned from experience. We can not obtain a 
knowledge of what is universal and necessary from ex- 
perience, because experience can inform us only that 
something is, but not that it must be." * 

The two elements of experience unite in various ways 
and have different names for the different stages of de- 
velopment : Feeling, known by various names — sensa- 
tion, sensibility, sensitivity, sense-perception, intuition, 

* Vol. 17, p. 299. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 



55 



and others ; Representation, in the forms of recollection, 
fancy, imagination, attention, and memory ; Understand- 
ing in the planes of sensuous ideas and abstract ideas ; 
Reason, with its absolute idea, or knowledge of totality ; 
Emotions in the grades of sensuous, psychical, and ra- 
tional ; and the Will, or free energy. 

Section I. — Sense-Perception - . 

Degree of Activity shown in Sense-Perception : Touch, Taste, Smell, Hear- 
ing, Seeing. 

The specializations of sense— touch, taste, smell, hear- 
ing, and seeing— in man have greater significance than 
in the animal, for these are instrumental in gaining a 
knowledge of the outer world, and this process and the 
knowledge thus gained furnishes occasion for the higher 
activity of mind. " Hence, man's act of cognition is 
more complex than that of mere sense-perception, which 
he shares with the animal. . . . The energy presup- 
posed in the act of feeling and sense-perception is a 
self-activity, but one that manifests itself in repro- 
ducing its environment ideally. It presupposes an or- 
ganic energy of nutrition in which it has assimilated 
portions of the environment and constructed for it- 
self a body. In the body it has organized stages of 
feeling, constituting the ascending scale of sense-per- 
ception. 

< fc (a) First there is the sense of touch — containing all 
higher senses in potentiality. When the higher senses 
have not developed, or after they have been destroyed 
by accident, the sense of touch may become sufficiently 
delicate to perceive not only contact with bodies, but 
also the slighter modifications involved in the effects of 



56 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

taste and smell, and even in the vibrations of sound and 
light." * 

III. — The sense of touch " contains all the higher 
senses in potentiality." Also the sense of touch may be 
subdivided into those of pressure, temperature, etc. By 
these subdivisions, knowledge of the nature and action 
of the organs of touch — nerve-fibers, corpuscles, " tactile- 
cells," etc. — may be rendered more specific, but little is 
gained as to the significance of the power of sense-per- 
ception. Introspection, in considering the nature of the 
activity of sense-perception, presupposes a being, " an 
organic energy of nutrition " and assimilation which has 
constructed a body having the organs necessary for an 
act of sense-perception. 

The celebrated case of Laura Bridgman furnishes an 
illustration of the extent to which the power of touch 
can be developed. 

" (b) The lowest form of special sense is taste, which 
is closely allied to nutrition. Taste perceives the phase 
of assimilation of the object which is commencing within 
the mouth. The individuality of the object is attacked 
and it gives way, its organic product or inorganic aggre- 
gate suffering dissolution — taste perceives the dissolu- 
tion. Substances that do not yield to the attack have 
no taste. Glass and gold have little taste compared 
with salt and sugar. The sense of taste differs from the 
process of nutrition in the fact that it does not assimi- 
late the body tasted, but reproduces ideally the energy 
that makes the impression on the sense-organ of taste. 
Even taste is an ideal activity, although it is present 

* Vol. 19, p. 206. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 57 

only when the nutritive energy is assimilating — it per- 
ceives the object in a state of dissolution." * 

III. — In the commencement of the process of assim- 
ilation of salt, the energy of the saliva of the mouth at- 
tacks the energy with which the particles of salt are 
held together, and the sense of taste, or the mind in a 
phase of its activity, perceives the dissolution of the 
salt, or the mind u reproduces ideally the energy that 
makes the impression on the sense-organ of taste." 

" (c) Smell is another specialization which perceives 
dissolution of objects in a more general form than taste. 
Both smell and taste perceive chemical changes that 
involve dissolution of the object." f 

III. — The oxygen of the air attacks the connective 
energy of the vegetable tissue of the rose, and the sense 
of smell perceives the fragrance, the dissolution of the 
object. 

" (d) Hearing is a far more ideal sense, and notes a 
manifestation of resistance to dissolution. The cohesion 
of the body is attacked and it resists the attack, and re- 
sistance takes the form of vibration ; and the vibration 
is perceived by the special sense of hearing. Taste and 
smell perceive the dissolution of the object, while hear- 
ing perceives the defense or successful reaction of an 
object in presence of an attack. Without reaction of 
cohesion there would be no vibration and no sound." % 

III. — A rock is struck with a hammer. The cohe- 
sion of the rock resists the force represented by the 
hammer. Vibrations are the result of the attack. These 
are communicated by the means of the air, the compli- 



Vol. 19, pp. 206, 207. f Vol. 19, p. 207. % Ibid. 



58 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

cated arrangement of the ear, the nerves, and the brain; 
the mind perceives the resistance to the attack. The 
kind of vibrations and intensity, and cultivation of the 
activity of mind shown in the power of hearing, deter- 
mines the character of the sound, varying from the 
harshest noise to the most beautiful music. 

" (e). The sense of sight perceives the individuality 
of the object not in a state of dissolution before an 
attack, as in the case of taste and smell, or as engaged 
in active resistance to attack, as in case of hearing, but 
in its independence. Sight is, therefore, the most ideal 
sense, inasmuch as it is furthest removed from percep- 
tion by means of the real process of assimilation, in 
which one energy destroys the product of another energy 
and extends its sway over it." * 

III. — The rays of light which are reflected to the 
eye from a neighboring church-steeple do not cause a 
dissolution of the object, neither is there an active re- 
sistance to the impinging rays, but the eye and organs 
of sight receive the reflected rays and the sense of sight 
perceives the steeple in its independence. The self- 
activity, or energy which reproduces this object, the 
steeple, does not destroy the product of another energy. 

Extent of self-activity shown in feeling. — " Sense- 
perception as the developed realization of the activity 
of feeling belongs to the animal creation, including man 
as an animal." f " Mere feeling alone is the perception 
of the external within the being, hence an ideal repro- 
duction of the external world. In feeling, the animal 
exists not only within himself, but also passes over his 

* Vol. 19, p. 207. f Vol. 14, p. 230. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 59 

limit, and lias for object the reality of the external 
world that limits him. Hence it is the perception of 
his finiteness — his limits are his defects, his needs, 
wants, inadequateness — his separation from the world 
as a whole. In feeling, the animal perceives the sepa- 
ration from the rest of the world, and also his union 
with it. Feeling expands into desire when the external 
world, or some portion of it, is seen as ideally belonging 
to the limited unity of the animal being. It is beyond 
the limit and ought to be assimilated within the limited 
individuality of the animal. Mere feeling, when atten- 
tively considered, is found to contain these wonderful 
features of self -activity : it reproduces for itself the 
external world that limits it ; it makes for itself an 
ideal object, which includes its own self and its not-self 
at the same time." * 

Remark. — In each of the above phases of sense-per- 
ception we have seen that the point of especial interest 
in the study of the human mind is that each act of 
sense-perception of the individual is a process in which 
the self limits and determines himself at the same time 
that he reproduces ideally a portion of the external 
world in himself. In desire, a " counterpart of feeling,'' 
self- activity goes out in the form of will and therefore 
becomes an emotion. See Section VII. 

Section II. — Representation. 

Self- Activity shown in Eepresentation : Becollection, Fancy, Imagination^ 
Attention, Memory. 

" All forms of sensibility are limited and special ; 
they refer only to the present, in its forms of here and 

* Vol. 14, p. 229. 



60 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

now. The animal can not feel what is not here and 
now. Even seeing is limited to what is present before 
it." * 

" The activity of mere feeling or sense-perception is 
aroused by external impressions, and is conditioned by 
them. If there is no object then there is no act of per- 
ception. Every occasion given for the self -activity 
involved in perception is an occasion for the manifesta- 
tion of self-activity, but a self-activity that acts only on 
external incitation is not yet separable from the body." f 

" While mere sensation, as such, acts only in the 
presence of the object, reproducing (ideally, it is true) 
the external object, the faculty of representation is a 
higher form of self-activity (or of reaction against sur- 
rounding conditions), because it can recall, at its own 
pleasure, the ideal object. Here is the beginning of 
emancipation from the limitations of time. 

" The self-activity of representation can summon be- 
fore it the object that is no longer present to it. Hence 
its activity is now a double one, for it can seize not only 
what is now and here immediately before it, but it can 
compare this present object with the past, and identify 
or distinguish between the two. Thus recollection or 
representation may become memory." % 

The distinctness of the image in a reproduced sense- 
perception varies as the activity of the will in Attention 
enters the process, and these degrees are shown in Rec- 
ollection, Fancy, Imagination, and Memory. 

EemarTc.— The idea that first one " faculty " of the 



* Vol. 14, pp. 230, 231. % Vol. 14, pp. 231, 232. 

f Vol. 19, p. 205. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 61 

mind and then another begins the process of develop- 
ment, should be guarded against. The troth is, that, 
although at different periods in the life of an individual 
some power of the mind is shown in a .greater degree 
than others, the mind in its development is one, and 
there is no reason why, for instance, the simple " good 
faith" of the child in the reality of things is not the 
same power as the " reason " which, at a later period of 
life, consciously sees the reality of things. And the 
fact that the " feelings are made over " by new thoughts, 
and that the will early appears in attention and in desire, 
shows that no point of time can be assigned for the be- 
ginning of the development of one power of the mind 
over another. 

But for the sake of clearness in studying the develop- 
ment of the mind, each phase will be considered by 
itself, with the purpose to show how the " lower phases " 
blend with or develop into the highest phase, or that of 
" rational insight." 

Recollection. — " Representation is reproduction with- 
out the presence of the sense-object; recollection and 
memory are forms of this. In the form of recollection 
the individual energy reproduces the activity of a past 
perception. The impression on the sense-organ is ab- 
sent, and the freedom of the individual is manifested in 
this reproduction without the occasion which is fur- 
nished by the impression on the organism from without. 
The freedom to reproduce the image of the object that 
has been once perceived leads by easy steps to the per- 
ception of general notions." * " As memory, the mind 

* Vol. 19, p. 207. 



62 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

achieves a form of activity far above that of sense-per- 
ception or mere recollection. It must be noted care- 
fully that mere recollection or representation, although 
it holds fast the perception in time (making it per- 
manent), does not necessarily constitute an activity com- 
pletely emancipated from time, nor indeed very ad- 
vanced toward it. It is only the beginning of such 
emancipation. For mere recollection stands in the 
presence of the special object of sense-perception; al- 
though the object is no longer present to the senses (or 
to mere feeling), yet the image is present to the repre- 
sentative perception, and is just as much a particular 
here and now as the object of sense-perception. There 
intervenes a new activity on the part of the soul before 
it arrives at memory. Recollection is not memory, but 
it is the activity which grows into it by the aid of the 
activity of attention." * 

III. — For instance, in the previous illustration of 
the sense of sight, there was an ideal reproduction of 
the steeple by the beholder. The steeple may be no 
longer present to the beholder ; the activity of the mind 
freely and spontaneously brings up an image or picture 
of the steeple. The mind, in its representative power, 
has before it the one steeple, and the beholder is limited 
to the presence of the one image. This power which 
spontaneously brings up the image of an object does not 
show the conscious use of the will in attention which 
intervenes before the power of mind seen in the ability 
to represent the steeple, becomes memory, or the activity 
which perceives the general class or type of objects. 

* Vol. 14, p. 232. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 63 

Fancy. — Representation repeats itself promiscuously, 
and makes new combinations, and forms, from images 
arising from sense-perception, an indefinite number of 
pictures. Tendencies and circumstances may to a de- 
gree influence the working of Fancy, yet the essential 
characteristic is that it acts without the directive power 
of the will. 

III. — Dreams, reverie, etc., are examples of fancy. 
The mental life of children is largely that of fancy, and 
also of those grown-up people who have never exercised 
the will in attention sufficiently to direct the activity of 
the mind into the planes of thinking. Writers of fairy 
tales and stories of improbable wonders and doings 
recognize this activity of the child-mind. The workings 
of fancy have also been made the foundation of suggest- 
ive poems and prose works, as Burns's " Tarn O'Shan- 
ter," Drake's "Culprit Fay," Wordsworth's "To a Sky- 
lark," Poe's "The Raven," etc., and "Arabian Nights," 
stories of Jules Verne, " Alice in Wonderland," etc. 

" We may here distinguish between the imagination 
and the fancy. The imagination follows the lines of 
Nature. Its creations take their place with her works. 
It brings to light what is hidden in Nature, or what she 
is striving to accomplish. The fancy works more inde- 
pendently. It forsakes the intent of Nature and adopts 
ends of its own. It combines the elements of Nature 
arbitrarily and artificially. Thus the fancy brings to- 
gether parts of the man and of the horse, and creates 
the centaur ; the imagination creates the Apollo. Fancy 
creates the dainty Ariel ; imagination creates Miranda 
with her sweet and innocent wonder. The world of 
fancy may be beautiful and fascinating, full of airy and 



64 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

delicate shapes ; we find in it enjoyment and refreshment, 
but it is a world apart from the real world. The world 
of imagination may be more natural than that of nature 
itself." * 

Imagination. — "Fancy and imagination are next 
higher than recollection, because the mind not only 
recalls images, bat makes new combinations of them, or 
creates them altogether." f 

" Creative imagination sees the correspondence of 
the lower to the highest order of being, and hence is a 
revealer of the nature of the absolute." J 

III. — In the lower planes of thought, the work of 
the imagination is mechanical and the combinations 
deviate but little from the patterns furnished by mem- 
ory ; but in the higher or creative planes, the imagi- 
nation invests the commonplace and familiar with a 
new light, and from the infinite realms unknown to 
ordinary minds reveals wonderful glimpses of truth 
and beauty. 

The housekeeper, in the arrangement of her borne, 
and the farmer, by the vision of rich harvest fields, are 
assisted and encouraged in the daily tasks. An imagi- 
native view of their completed work spurs on a Watts, 
Stephenson, or Edison to attempt remarkable utiliza- 
tions of the forces of Nature. A Darwin sees the species 
of plants and animals arranged in an orderly manner in 
a process of development even before he starts out on 
his voyages of discovery and verification. Washington 
is moved to persistent and heroic deeds because his 

* C. C. Everett, « Poetry, Comedy, and Duty," pp. 4, 5. 
f Vol. 14, p. 231. % Dictation. 



MAN : A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 65 

imaginative insight shows him a nation united under a 
federal constitution while as yet not one word of the 
nation's constitution had been written. 

And the world's master-minds in their creative 
power : Beethoven, Mendelssohn, convey their thoughts 
and feelings in music ; Phidias sees the possible dignity 
and nobility and beauty and grace of the human mind 
and represents them in the human form ; through paint- 
ing, Raphael and Micheal Angelo give to the world 
their marvelous interpretations of the divine ; Homer, 
Dante, Goethe, Shakespeare, by the means of poetry, dis- 
close the nature of spirit, and portray the unnumbered 
awful conflicts of good and evil in the human soul. 
This creative power sees totalities, and therefore comes 
into harmony with rational insight. See Section YI, 
" Beauty." 

Attention. — "The activity by which the mind as- 
cends from sense-perception to memory is the activity 
of attention. Here we have the appearance of the will 
in intellectual activity. Attention is the control of per- 
ception by means of the will. The senses shall no 
longer passively receive and report what is before 
them, but they shall choose some definite point of obser- 
vation, and neglect all the rest. Here in the act of atten- 
tion we find abstraction, and the greater attainment of 
freedom by the mind. The mind abstracts its view 
from the many things before it, and concentrates on one 
point. 

" Attention abstracts from some things before it, and 
concentrates on others. Through attention grows the 
capacity to discriminate between the special, particu- 
lar object and its general type. Generalization arises, 



66 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

but not what is usually called generalization — only a 
more elementary form of it." * 

" For when the mind notices its mode of activity by 
which the former perception is reproduced or repre- 
sented, it perceives, of course, its power of repeating the 
process, and notes that the same energy can produce an 
indefinite series of different images resembling one 
another. It is by this action of representation that the 
idea of the universal arises. It is a reflection on the 
conditions of recalling a former perception. The energy 
that can produce within itself the conditions of a for- 
mer perception at pleasure, without the presence of the 
original object of perception, is an energy that is generic 
— that is, an energy that can produce the particular and 
repeat it to any extent. The universal or generic power 
can produce a class." f 

III. — "Educators have for many ages noted that 
the habit of attention is the first step in intellectual 
education. With it is found the point of separation 
between the animal intellect and the human. Not atten- 
tion simply — like that with which a cat watches by the 
hole of a mouse — but attention which arrives at results 
of abstraction is the distinguishing characteristic of edu- 
cative beings." \ 

" Some writers would have us suppose that we do 
not arrive at general notions except by the process of 
classification and abstraction in the mechanical manner 
that they lay down for this purpose. The fact is that 
the mind has arrived at these general ideas in the pro- 



* Vol. 14, p. 232, 233. % Vol. 14, pp. 232, 233. 

f Vol. 19, pp. 207, 208. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIYE INDIVIDUAL. 67 

cess of learning language. In infancy, most children 
have learned such words as is, existence, being, nothing, 
motion, cause, change, I, you, he, etc." * 

For instance, the process by which the perception 
of an apple becomes a conception, is not by separating 
the apple into its qualities, as the color, size, sweetness, 
sourness, the number, size, and arrangement of seeds 
etc., and then from the various parts building up the 
apple in a mechanical way, but the concept apple arises 
through the activity of attention to the object in the 
very process of learning the word apple. 

The child shows that the concept arises thus sponta- 
neously by the fact that he can recognize and identify 
the same object under different circumstances, another 
apple of different size and color, and the picture of an 
apple even before he is able to enumerate the various 
qualities necessary to make an apple. 

This " concept " apple is not the same as the image 
which arose through the representative power from the 
reproduced object of sense-perception, but this image 
has become the concept through the activity of the will 
in attention, or by means of an act of reflection. This 
concept apple does not stand for any particular apple, 
as the image apple did, but stands for any apple of the 
whole class of apples, and this concept arose in the pro- 
cess of learning the word apple. The concept apple is 
not the result of conscious reflective acts, but these con- 
cepts are the preparation for thought, the objects of 
memory, the " general objects " which thought uses. 

" Memory and the phenomena of language are not 

* Vol 14, pp 234, 235 



68 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

recognized by psychologists generally as being the first 
manifestation of the self-conscious individuality." 

Memory. — Recollection or representation may be- 
come memory. " The special characteristics of objects 
of the senses are allowed to drop away, in so far as they 
are unessential and merely circumstantial, and gradually 
there arises in the mind the type — the general form — 
of the object perceived. This general form is the ob- 
ject of memory. Memory deals therefore with what is 
general and a type, rather than with what is directly 
recollected or perceived." * 

" With this consciousness of a generic energy mani- 
fested in the power of representation, arises the recogni- 
tion of a generic energy manifested in the external 
world as the producer of the particular objects per- 
ceived, and each object is seen in its producing energy as 
one of an indefinite number produced by the continued 
existence of that energy. The consciousness of free- 
dom of the ego in this restricted form of freedom of 
representing or recalling former sense-perceptions lies 
thus at the basis of the perception of objects as speci- 
mens of classes ; hence, representation or recollection, 
which is special and individual, leads to the act of re- 
flection, by which the energy is perceived and its ge- 
neric character, and with it the perception of the neces- 
sary generic character of the energy at the foundation 
of every impression upon our senses, or at the founda- 
tion of every object perceived. 

" At this point the activity of perception becomes 
conception, or the perception of the general in the par- 

* Vol. 14, p. 232. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 69 

ticular. The s this oak ' is perceived as ' an oak,' or a 
specimen of the class oak. The class oak is conceived 
as an indefinite number of individual oaks, all produced 
by an energy which manifests itself in an organic pro- 
cess of assimilation and elimination, in which appear 
the stadia of acorn, sapling, tree, and crop of acorns — a 
continuous circle of reproduction of the species oak, a 
transformation of the one into the many — the one acorn 
becoming a crop of acorns, and then a forest of oaks. 

" The rise of self-consciousness, or the perception of 
self-activity, and the perception of the general object in 
the external world are thus contemporaneous. "With 
the perception of the general energy the psychological 
activity has outgrown representation and become con- 
ception. With conception the energy or soul begins to 
be an individuality for itself — a conscious individuality. 
It recognizes itself as a free energy. The stage of 
mere perception does not recognize itself, but merely 
sees its own energy as the objective energy, because it 
acts wholly as occasioned by the external object. In 
the recognition of the object as an individual of a class 
the soul recognizes its own freedom and independent 
activity. Recollection (Erinnerung) relates to indi- 
viduals, recalling the special presentation or impression, 
and representing the object as it was before perceived. 
Memory (like the German word Gedachtniss) may be 
distinguished as the activity which reproduces the ob- 
ject as one of a class, and therefore as the form of rep- 
resentation that perceives universals. With memory 
arises language." * 

* Vol. 19, pp. 208, 209. 



70 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

" Such a stage we call memory, in the special and 
higher sense of the word, as corresponding to not 
ava/Avrjo-Ls, but fjbvrjjjuoorvvT} or fivrffir) — not £rinnerung, 
but Gedachtniss — not the memory that recollects, but 
the memory that recalls by the aid of universal ideas. 
(Such memory is creative as it goes from the general to 
the particular.) These general ideas are mnemonic aids 
— pigeon-holes, as it were, in the mind — whereby the 
soul conquers the endless multiplicity of details in the 
world. It refers to its species, and saves the species 
under a name — then is able to recall by the name a vast 
number of special instances." * ..." In thinking of 
such faculties in the lives of great men of science — like 
Agassiz, Cuvier, Lyell, Yon Humboldt, Darwin, and 
Goethe — we see what this means. It is the first or 
crudest stage of mental culture that depends chiefly on 
sense-perception and recollection. After the general 
has been discovered, the mind uses it more and more, 
and the information of the senses becomes a smaller and 
smaller part of the knowledge. Agassiz in a single 
scale saw the whole fish, so that the scale was all that 
was required to suggest the whole ; Lyell could see the 
whole history of its origin in a pebble ; Cuvier could 
see the entire animal skeleton in one of its bones. The 
memory, which holds types, processes, and universals, 
the condensed form of all human experience, the total 
aggregate of all sense-perception of the universe and all 
reflection on it, this constitutes the chief faculty of the 
scientific man, and sense-perception and mere recollec- 
tion play the most insignificant part. This points to 

* Vol. 19, p. 211. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 71 

the complete independence of the soul as a far-off idea. 
When the soul can think the creative thought, the 
theoretic vision of the world — rj Oecapia, as Aristotle calls 
it — then it comes to perfect insight, for it sees the 
whole in each part, and does not require any longer the 
mechanical memory, because it has a higher form of 
intellect that sees immediately in the individual thing 
its history, just as Lyell or Agassiz saw the history of a 
pebble or a h'sh, or Asa Gray sees all botany in a single 
plant. Mechanical memory is thus taken up into a 
higher ' faculty,' and its function being absorbed, it 
gradually perishes. But it never perishes until its 
function is provided for in a more complete manner." * 

Section III. 

Significance of the Power to use Language. — 
" There is no language until the mind can perceive gen- 
eral types of existence ; mere proper names nor mere 
exclamations or cries do not constitute language. All 
words that belong to language are significative — they 
' express ' or ( mean ' something — hence they are conven- 
tional symbols, and not mere individual designations. 
Language arises only through common consent, and is 
not an invention of one individual. It is a product of 
individuals acting together as a community, and hence 
implies the ascent of the individual into the species. 
Unless an individual could ascend into the species he 
could not understand language. To know words and 
their meaning is an activity of divine significance ; it 
denotes the formation of universals in the mind — the 

* Vol. 19, p. 212, 213. 



Y2 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ascent above the here and now of the senses, and above 
the representation of mere images, to the activity which 
grasps together the general conception of objects and 
thus reaches beyond what is transient and variable." * 

" Language fixes the knowledge of objects in univer- 
sals. Each word represents an indefinite number of 
particular objects, actions, or relations. The word oak 
stands for all oaks — present, past, or future. No being 
can use language, much less create language, unless it 
has learned to conceive as well as perceive — learned to 
see all objects as individuals belonging to classes, and 
incidentally recognized its own individuality. All 
human beings possess language. Even deaf and dumb 
human beings invent and nse gestures with as defi- 
nite meaning as words, each gesture denoting a class 
with a possible infinite number of special applica- 
tions." f 

" Language is the sign by which we can recognize 
the arrival of the soul at this stage of development into 
complete self -activity. Hence language is the criterion 
of immortal individuality. In order to use language it 
must be able not only to act for itself, but to act wholly 
upon itself. It must not only perceive things by the 
senses, but accompany its perceiving by an inner per- 
ception of the act of perceiving (and thus be its own 
environment). This perception of the act and process 
of perceiving is the recognition of classes, species, and 
genera — the universal processes underlying the exist- 
ence of the particular. 

" Language in this sense involves conventional signs, 

* Vol. 14, pp. 233, 234. f Vol. 19, p. 209. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. ?3 

and is not an immediate expression of feeling like the 
cries of animals. The immediate expression of feeling 
(which is only a reaction) does not become language, 
even when it accompanies recollection or the free repro- 
duction — nor until it accompanies memory or the seeing 
of the particular in the general. When it can be showm 
that a species of animals use conventional signs in com- 
munication with each other, we shall be able to infer 
their immortality, because we shall have evidence of 
their freedom from sense-perception and environment 
sufficient to create for themselves their own occasion 
for activity. They would then be shown to react not 
merely against their environment, but against their own 
action — hence they would involve both action and reac- 
tion, self and environment. They would, in that case, 
have selves, and their selves exist for themselves, and 
hence they would have self-identity." * 

" Language is the means of distinguishing between 
the brute and the human — between the animal soul, 
which has continuity only in the species (which per- 
vades its being in the form of instinct), and the human 
soul, which is immortal, and possessed of a capacity to 
be educated. ... 

" Doubtless the nobler species of animals possess not 
only sense-perception, but a considerable degree of the 
power of representation. The^y are not only able to 
recollect, but to imagine or fancy to some extent, as is 
evidenced by their dreams. But that animals do not 
generalize sufficiently to form for themselves a new ob- 
jective world of types and general concepts w r e have a 

* Vol. 19, p. 212. 



74 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

sufficient evidence in the fact that they do not use 
words, or invent conventional symbols. With the ac- 
tivity of the symbol-making form of representation, 
which we have named memory, and whose evidence is 
the invention and use of language, the true form of 
individuality is attained, and each individual human 
being, as mind, may be said to be the entire species. 
Inasmuch as he can form universals in his mind, he 
can realize the most abstract thought ; and he is con- 
scious. ... 

" It should be carefully noted that this activity of 
generalization which produces language and character- 
izes the human from the brute is not the generalization 
of the activity of thought so called. It is the prepara- 
tion for thought. These general types of things are 
the things which thought deals with. Thought does 
not deal with mere immediate objects of the senses ; it 
deals rather with the objects which are indicated by 
words, i. e., general objects." * 

Section IV. — Kefleotion. 

"General Objects" of Memory, as Thought, become Judgments — Sense- 
perception : Sensuous Ideas perceive Objects ; Identity, Difference — 
Understanding: Abstract Ideas investigate Object and Environment; 
Eelations — The " General Objects " or "Universals" are possible be- 
cause of Eeason : Absolute Idea or Eational Insight knows Logical 
Conditions of Existence. 

A Conception is not a Mental Picture. — " Percep- 
tions relate to individual objects ; conceptions relate to 
general classes or to abstractions — such is the current 
doctrine of psychology. Let us now take up the in- 

* Vol. 14, pp. 233, 234. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 75 

quiry, What constitutes a general notion or concep- 
tion ? To this we may reply that it is not a mental 
image but a definition. The general notion tree should 
include all trees of whatever description, and it is ex- 
pressed by a definition. But no sooner do I attempt 
to conceive the notion tree than I form a mental image. 
The image, however, is not general enough to suit the 
notion. I image a particular specimen of tree — an oak, 
for example. If I image it vividly it is an individual 
just as much as the oak that I may see before me in the 
forest. My conception of tree in general recognizes the 
inadequacy of the image and dismisses it or permits it 
to be replaced by another image which presents a differ- 
ent specimen. Perhaps we have never noticed this rela- 
tion of images to the conception. We are conscious of 
only a few phases of our mental activity until we have 
cultivated our powers of introspection. Notice carefully 
the act of realizing any general conception (or " con- 
cept,'' if one wishes technically to distinguish the prod- 
uct from the process itself). We shall discover that our 
definition is a sort of rule for the formation of images, 
rather than an image. What conception do we form of 
bird % We think of a flying animal — of feathers, wings, 
bill, claws, and various appurtenances which we unite 
in the idea of bird. We call up images and dismiss 
them as we go over the elements of our definition, for 
we recognize the images to be too special or particular 
to correspond to the conception. In the rudest and 
least developed intellects, whether of savages or children, 
the same process is repeated. Is this a bird ? Yes ; it 
has a bill, claws, feathers, wings, etc. But it does not 
have either of these in general. Its bill is a particular 



76 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

specimen of bill, having one of the many shapes or 
colors or magnitudes possible to a bilL So, too, of its 
feathers, wings, claws, etc. The image of our bird was 
not of a bird in general, but of a hawk or duck, a lien 
or pigeon, or of some other species of birds. Nor was 
the image that of a hawk or a duck, etc., in general, 
but of a particular variety and not even of a variety in 
general, but finally of a possible or remembered individ- 
ual specimen of a variety. So, too, the features of the 
bird are only individual specimens or examples that fall 
under the general conceptions of claws, feathers, bills, 
wings, etc* 

"The definition which we have formed for ourselves 
serves as a rule by which we form an image that will 
illustrate it. This difference between the conception 
and the specimen is known to the child and the savage, 
though it is not consciously reflected upon. 

" Take up a different class of conceptions. Take the 
abstractions of color, taste, smell, sound, or touch ; for 
example— redness, sourness, fragrance, loudness, hard- 
ness, etc. Our conception includes infinite degrees of 
possible intensity, while our image or recalled experi- 
ence is of some definite degree and does not correspond 
to the general notion. 

" We have considered objects and classes of objects 
that admit of images as illustrations. These images, if 
vague, seem to approximate conceptions ; if vivid, to 
depart from them. But no image can be so vague as to 
correspond to any conception. Let us take more general 
notions, such as force, matter, quality, being. For force, 
image, if one can, some action of gravitation or of heat. 
If some image or experience can be called up it is felt 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 77 

to be a special example that covers only a very small 
part of the province of force in general. But an image, 
strictly considered, can not be made of force at all nor 
of any special example of force. We can image some 
object that is acted upon by a force — we can image it 
before it is acted upon and after it is acted upon. That 
is to say, we can image the results of the force, but 
not the force itself. We can think of force, but not 
image it. 

"If we conceive existence, and image some existent 
thing ; if we conceive quantity in general and image a 
series of things that can be numbered, or an extension 
or degree that may be measured ; if we conceive relation 
in general and try to illustrate it by imaging particular 
objects between which there is a relation — in all these 
and similar cases we can hardly help being conscious of 
the vast difference between the image and the concep- 
tion. In realizing the conception of relation, as in that 
of force or energy, we do not image even an example 
or specimen of a relation or force, but we image only 
the conditions or termini of a specimen relation ; but 
the relation itself must be thought, just as any force 
must be thought but can not be imaged. We can think 
relations, but not image them. 

" Just here we notice that we have a lurking convic- 
tion that these general ideas or conceptions are not so 
valid and true to reality as our images are or as our im- 
mediate perceptions are. Conceptions, we should think, 
are vague and faint impressions of sensation. ' Ideas 
are the faint images of sense-impressions 5 said Hume. 

"Nominalism says that there is nothing in reality 
corresponding to our general conceptions, and that such 



Y8 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

conceptions are mere devices of ours for convenience in 
knowing and reasoning. If so, our images are truer 
than our conceptions. Herbert Spencer says (in his 
' First Principles') that our conceptions are mere sym- 
bols of objects too great or too multitudinous to be 
mentally represented. 

" If the views of Hume and Herbert Spencer are true 
in regard to our general notions, psychology would have 
a very different lesson in it— very different from that 
which we propose to -find. To lis the images are far 
less true than our conceptions. The images stand for 
fleeting or evanescent forms, while the conceptions state 
the eternal and abiding laws, the causal energies that 
constitute the essence of all phenomena." * 

" As sense-perception has before it a world of pres- 
ent objects, so thought has before it a world of general 
concepts, which language has defined and fixed. 

" It is true that few persons are aware that language 
stands for a world of general ideas and that reflection 
has to do with this world of universals." f 

"It is usual, however, to account for the repro- 
duction of these universal ideas by supposing that the 
mind first collects many individuals and then abstracts 
so as to omit the differences and preserve the likeness 
or resemblance, and thus forms the conception of class. 
It therefore makes reflection responsible, not only for 
the recognition of the universal, but for its creation. 
But the act of reflection only discovers what had already 
been elaborated in the lower faculty of the mind. Self- 

* "Illinois School Journal," vol. vii, pp. 494-496, July, 1888. 
f Vol. 14, p. 236. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 79 

consciousness is not the cause of universal ideas, but 
the universal rises with it as its condition (the per- 
ception of the universal being perception of the self). 
Both appear at the same time as essential phases of 
the same act. The soul uses universals in language 
long before it recognizes the same as universal (its 
first recognition of the universal being only self-recog- 
nition). Reflection discovers that these ideas are gen- 
eral — but it has used them ever since human beings 
became human. After reflection has dawned, how- 
ever, a new series of universal terms begin to come 
into use, which denote not merely universal classes 
or generic energies, but the pure energy in its self- 
activity, as producing inward distinctions which do 
not reach external particular things as results. Here 
begins conscious independence of the world of sense- 
perception." * 

" The first stage of knowing concentrates its atten- 
tion upon the object, the second upon its relations, and 
the third on the necessary and infinite conditions of its 
existence. The first stage of knowing belongs to the 
surface of experience, and is very shallow. It regards 
things as isolated and independent of each other. The 
second stage of experience is much deeper, and takes 
note of the essential dependence of things. They are 
seen to exist only in relation to others upon which they 
depend. This second stage of experience discovers 
unity and unities in discovering dependence of one upon 
another. The third stage of experience discovers inde- 
pendence and self -relation underlying all dependence 

* Vol. 19, p. 210. 



80 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

and relativity. The infinite, or the self -related, under- 
lies the finite and relative or dependent. These three 
stages of knowing, found in considering the relation of 
experience to time and space-object, environment, and 
logical condition — these elements are in every act of 
experience, although the environment is not a very clear 
and distinct element in the least cultured knowing, and 
space and time are still more obscure." * 

Sense-perception : Sensuous ideas. — " As a human 
process, the knowing is always a knowing by universals 
— a recognition, and not simple apprehension, such as 
the animals, or such as beings have that to do not use 
language. The process of development of stages of 
thought begins with sensuous ideas which perceive 
mere individual, concrete, real objects, as it supposes. 
In conceiving these, it uses language and thinks general 
ideas, but it does not know it, nor is it conscious of the 
relation involved in such objects. This is the first stage 
of reflection. The world exists for it as an innumerable 
congeries of things, each one independent of the other, 
and possessing self -existence. It is the standpoint from 
which atomism would be adopted as the philosophic 
system. Ask it what the ultimate principle of existence 
is, and it would reply, ' Atoms.' " f 

" In the most rudimentary form of knowing, i. e., 
in sense-perception, there is a synthesis of the two ex- 
tremes of cognition: 1, the immediately conditioned 
content, which is the particular object as here and now 
perceived ; 2, the accompanying perception of the 
self or ego which perceives, that is, the activity of self- 

* Vol. 17, pp. 300, 301. f Y(A - 14 > P- 236 - 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 81 

consciousness — the knowledge that it is I who am sub- 
ject in this particular act of perception. Hence, in 
sense-perception, two objects are necessarily combined : 
(a) the particular object here and now presented ; (h) 
the universal subject of all activity of perceiving. . . . 
Such a thing as the perception of the permanent, or a 
relation of any sort (for example, the one of identity, or 
of difference, the most elementary and fundamental 
ones) can not take place without attention on the part 
of the subject who perceives, to the perception of self, 
or to one of the universal factors which are present in 
perception. This act of attention to self is reflection — 
self-perception entering all perception." * 

" This lowest stage of thinking is least able to dis- 
criminate distinctions and differences. The most imma- 
ture mind thinks all objects as having being. ■ All ob- 
jects to it are co-ordinate and of equal validity in this 
respect. The moment the mind begins to observe rela- 
tion, this co-ordination vanishes, and we make the terms 
of experience unequal. This object depends upon that 
object in some respect, and therefore is not co-ordinate, 
but subordinate to it. This belongs to that, and is only 
a manifestation of that object's energy or sphere of 
influence." f 

" The lowest stage of thinking supposes that its ob- 
jects are all independent one of another. Each thing is 
self-existent, and a ' solid reality ' ; to be sure, it thinks 
relations between things, but it places no special value 
on relations. Things exist apart from relations, and 
relations are for the most part the arbitrary product of 

* Vol. 10, p. 226. f VoL 17, p. 338. 



82 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

thought or reflection. Things, it is true, are composite 
and divisible into smaller things, and smaller things are 
divisible again. All things are composed of smallest 
things or atoms. This lowest stage of thinking, it 
appears, explains all by the two categories of ' thing ' 
and ' composition.' All differences accordingly arise 
through combination or composition. But since differ- 
ences include all that needs explanation, it follows that 
this stage of thinking deceives itself in supposing that 
things are the essential elements in its view of the world 
and that relations are the unessential. A little develop- 
ment of the power of thought produces for us the con- 
sciousness that some relations, at least, are the essential 
elements of our experience." * 

III. — The process in sense-perception has already 
been described. It has been found helpful in class to 
consider how the different stages of thinking regard the 
same object. To the plane of sensuous ideas, a tree 
exists in the correct external adjustment of the parts — 
root, stem, and leaves. One tree differs from another in 
its size, shape, kind of leaves, flowers, wood, etc. The 
uses of the tree for shade, timber, etc. are apparent. 
An oak, birch, beech, maple, etc. each exists in its inde- 
pendence. 

Wordsworth's Peter Bell, to whom — 

A primrose by a river's brim, 

A yellow primrose was to him, 

And it was nothing more, 

lived in this plane of thought nearest allied to sense- 
perception, or the plane of sensuous ideas. 

* " Illinois School Journal," vol. vii, p. 442. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 83 

Understanding : Abstract Ideas. — " But this view 
(from the plane of sensuous ideas) of the world is a very 
unstable one, and requires very little reflection to over- 
turn it and bring one to the next basis — that of abstract 
ideas. When the mind looks carefully at the world of 
things, it finds that there is dependence and interdepend- 
ence. Each object is related to something else, and 
changes when that changes. Each object is a part of a 
process that is going on. The process produced it, and 
the process will destroy it, nay, it is destroying it now, 
while we look at it. We find, therefore, that things are 
not the true beings which we thought them to be, but 
processes are the reality. Science takes this attitude, 
and studies out the history of each thing in its rise and 
its disappearance, and it calls this history the truth. 
This stage of thinking does not believe in atoms or in 
things ; it believes in forces and processes — i abstract ' 
— because they are negative, and can not be seen by the 
senses. This is the dynamic standpoint in philos- 
ophy." * 

u Sense-perception increases in richness of knowledge 
in proportion as the power of synthesis or of combining 
the successive elements of perception increases. And 
this power of combining such separate elements is con- 
tingent on the power of reflection or of attention to the 
self-activity in perception. Such reflection is the condi- 
tion of all generalization. The minimum of this power 
of reflection admits barely the possibility of combining 
the perceptions of time-moments that are slightly sepa- 
rated, and hence its results are the mere perception of 

* Vol. 14, pp. 236, 237. 



84: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

identity or difference without quantity or quality there- 
of." * 

. " That first stage of thinking, nearest allied to sense- 
perception, supposes that things are the essential ele- 
ments of all being. The second stage, which we may call 
the understanding, knows better what is essential. By 
relations it does not mean arbitrary comparisons or the 
result of idle reflections. It has made the discovery of 
truly essential relations. It deals with the category of 
relativity, in short, and goes so far as to affirm that if a 
grain of sand were to be destroyed, all beings in space 
would be changed more or less. Each thing is relative 
to every other, and there is reciprocal or mutual de- 
pendence. 

" Isaac Newton's thought of universal gravitation de- 
serves all the fame it has got, because it sets up in 
modern thinking this category of relativity, and all 
thinking in our day is being gradually trained into its 
use by the application constantly made of it. Isaac 
Newton is a perpetual schoolmaster to the race, 

" Herbert Spencer owes his reputation to his faithful 
adherence to the thought of relativity in his expositions. 
Our knowledge is all relative, says he (with the excep- 
tion of that very important knowledge— the knowledge 
of the principle of relativity itself — we add, sotto voce), 
and things, too, are all relative, he continues. Essential 
relativity means dependence. A is dependent on B, so 
that the being of B is also the being of A. Such is the 
law of relativity. Moreover, it refuses to think an ulti- 
mate principle as origin of all. It say, A depends on 

* Vol. 10, pp. 226, 227. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 85 

B, B, again, on C, C on D, and so on, in infinite pro- 
gression. Relativity, as a supreme principle, is panthe- 
istic. It makes all being dependent on something be- 
yond it. Hence it denies ultimate individuality. All 
individuality is a transient result of some underlying 
abstract principle, a ' persistent force,' for example. 
Individual things are the transient products (static equi- 
libria) of forces. Forces, again, are modes of manifesta- 
tion of some persistent energy into which they all 
vanish. 

" This second stage of thinking attains its most per- 
fect form in the doctrine of correlation of forces, and is 
the ancient skepticism of Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus. 
It underlies, too, the Buddhist religion and all panthe- 
istic theories of the world. Nothing is so common 
among men of science in our day as theories based on 
absolute relativity. It is often set up by those who still 
hold the non-relational theory of the lower plane of 
thought, though if held with logical strictness it is in- 
compatible with the preceding stage. 

" The first stage explains by the category of things, 
or independent non-relational beings, while the second 
stage explains by the category of force or essential 
relation. Take notice that force does not need a nu- 
cleus of things as a basis of efficacy; for things are 
themselves only systems of forces held in equilibria by 
force." * 

(" Modern natural science sets up the doctrine of the 
correlation of forces and the i persistence of force.' In 
the case of individual forces — heat, light, electricity, 



Illinois School Journal," vol. vii, pp. 442, 443. 
9 



86 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

magnetism, attraction of gravitation, and cohesion — 
there is fmitude, each force manifesting itself only when 
in process of transition into another form of force. But 
there is a ground to all these forces, which is an energy. 
The ' persistent force ' is the energy of each force with- 
out the particular quality of each force. But it is that 
which originates each special force, and that which like- 
wise causes it to lose its individuality and pass over into 
another force. The ' persistent force ' is not a special 
force, like light, heat, etc., for the special forces are in 
a state of tension against each other, or are merely 
names for different stages of the same energy. The 
' persistent force' is an energy that acts, not on an- 
other, but only on itself. In all changes and loss of 
individuality on the part of particular forces the ' per- 
sistent force' abides the same, continually emerging 
from its successive disguises under the mask of partic- 
ular forces. 

" Persistent force can not, like a special force, act on 
something else, because it is the totality of all forces. 
All things are mere equilibria of forces, and hence things, 
too, are manifestations of the self-activity of ' persistent 
force.' Thus natural science does not find itself able 
to avoid thinking self-activity as the ground of things 
and forces." * 

" A logical investigation of the principle of ' persist- 
ent force ' would prove that the principle of Personal 
Being is presupposed as its true form. Since the ' per- 
sistent force' is the sole and ultimate reality, it origi- 
nates all other reality only by self -activity, and thus is 

* Vol. 17, pp. 338, 339. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 87 

self-determined. Self-determination implies self-con- 
scionsness as the true form of its existence," *) 

III. — In its conscious independence of the objects 
of sense-perception, the mind in the plane of abstract 
ideas freely makes universals from the universals, or 
concepts, or general objects of memory, or thoughts in 
the sensuous plane; in doing this the mind not only 
recognizes these universals, but also at the same time 
notices the mind's own activity in forming these, and 
thus in the sphere of the understanding the mind 
" looks upon the image-making process." 

This stage of thought considers both the object 
and its environment. A tree no longer exists in its 
independence. The transformation of water, air, and 
earthy materials into oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, 
carbon, etc. is of far greater interest. The difficulty 
with which these combinations are made and broken 
up in the laboratory, and the ease with which the 
tree does this work are plainly evident to this plane 
of thought. And again, what seemed so stable in the 
tree is again changed, and a handful of ashes remains 
in the place of the growing tree. Notwithstanding 
these changes, this plane of thought sees that the 
changes have not been 'a process of destruction, but 
that the elements which before made the tree have as- 
sumed new forms and that the plant-energy bears a 
relation to other kinds of energy and correlates with 
the whole. 

Reason: Absolute Idea. — "Relativity presupposes 
self-relation. Self -relation is the category of the reason, 

* Vol. 14, p. 238. 



88 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

just as relativity is the category of the understanding or 
non-relativity the category of sense-perception. De- 
pendence implies transference of energy, else how could 
energy be borrowed ? That which originates energy is 
independent being. Beflection discovers relativity or 
dependence, and hence nnites beings into systems. 
Deepest reflection discovers total systems and the self- 
determining principles which originate systems of de- 
pendent being. The reason looks for complete, inde- 
pendent, or total beings. Hence the reason finds the 
self-active or its results everywhere. 

" Sense-perception is atheistic ; it finds each thing 
sufficient for itself, that is to say, self-existent. The 
understanding is pantheistic ; it finds everything finite 
and relative and dependent on an absolute that trans- 
cends all qualities and attributes — 'an unknown and 
unknowable ' i persistent force,' which is the negative 
of all particular forces. The reason is tbeistic because 
it finds self-activity or self-determination, and identifies 
these with mind. Mind is self-activity in a perfect 
form, while life is the same in a less developed stage. 
Every whole is an independent being, and hence self- 
determined or self-active. If not self-determined it has 
no determinations (qualities, marks, or attributes), and, is 
pure nothing ; or, having determinations, it must origi- 
nate them itself or else receive them from outside itself. 
But in case it receives its determinations from outside 
it is a dependent being. Reason sees this disjunctive 
syllogism. While Buddhism and Brahmanism are relig- 
ions of the understanding, Christianity is essentially a 
religion of the reason and furnishes a sort of universal 
education for the mind in habits of thinking according 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 89 

to reason. It teaches by authority the view- of -the- world 
that reason thinks." * 

" The final standpoint of the intellect is that in 
which it perceives the highest principle to be a self- 
determining or self-active Being, self-conscious, and 
creator of a world which manifests him." f 

" Each step upward in ideas arrives at a more ade- 
quate idea of the true reality. Force is more real than 
thing y persistent force than particular forces ; Absolute 
Person is more real than the force or forces which he 
creates. This final form of thinking is the only form 
which is consistent with the theory of education. Each 
individual should ascend by education into participation 
— conscious participation — in the life of the species. 
Institutions — family, society, state, church — all are in- 
strumentalities by which the humble individual may 
avail himself of the help of the race, and live over in 
himself its life. The highest stage of thinking is the 
stage of insight. It sees the world as explained by the 
principle of Absolute Person. It finds the world of 
institutions a world in harmony with such a principle." % 

III. — The third stage of thought not only renders 
the other stages possible and sees what can be known 
in those planes of thought, but has an insight into the 
nature of the universe as a whole ; and this rational in- 
sight can not be obtained from the first or second stage 
of thought. What to the lowest stage of thinking had 
been " dead results," fixed objects, to the second had 
been mere " processes," to the third becomes a living 

* " Illinois School Journal," vol. vii, pp. 443, 444. 
f Vol. 14, p. 238. % Vol 14, p. 239. 



90 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

energy. The nature of change or activity is seen. The 
]ife of the tree, the extent of self-activity manifested 
in the tree — that this life, this self-activity, is an organic 
energy appearing in the various stages of growth of a 
single plant, of the species, and of the whole class; 
that the organic energy differs in its power and mani- 
festations in plant and in animal life ; and that the or- 
ganic energy of man shows still another phase of life, 
in that when the self is not only able to act, but to act 
upon itself, it becomes self -producing, and then self -ac- 
tivity becomes true individuality. Therefore, the in- 
sight into the nature or life of a tree includes not only 
an insight into the conditions of the existence of the 
tree, the external phases of growth, the processes, the 
nature of these processes, the difference between these 
processes and other organic processes, or the difference 
between activity of life in its lower phases and the ac- 
tivity of thought, the nature of thought in its phases of 
limitation and self-determination, and the nature of Ab- 
solute Thought or complete self-determination. 

The Three Stages of Thought. — " It has appeared 
that each of the three stages of thinking is a view-of-the 
world, and that it is not a theory of things worn for 
ornament, so to speak, or only on holidays, but a silent 
presupposition that tinges all one's thinking. 

" A person may wear his religion on Sabbath-days 
and put it off on week-days possibly ; but his view-of- 
the-world shows itself in all that he does. All things 
take on a different appearance when viewed by the 
light of the reason. For reason is insight ; it sees all 
things in God, as Malebranche expressed it ; for it 
looks at each thing to discover in it the purpose of the 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 91 

whole universe. To see the whole in the part is justly 
esteemed characteristic of divine intelligence. 

" The oft-asserted ability of great men of science — 
that of Cuvier to see the whole animal in a single bone 
of its skeleton ; that of Lyell to read the history of the 
glacial period in a pebble ; that of Agassiz to recognize 
the whole fish by one of its scales ; that of Asa Gray 
to see all botany in a single plant — these are indications 
of the arrival at the third stage of knowing on the part 
of scientific men within their departments. Goethe's 
'Homunculus' in the second part of ' ' Faust,' symbol- 
izes this power of insight which within a limited sphere 
(its bottle !), is able to recognize the whole in each frag- 
ment. The spirit of specialization in our time aims to 
exhaust one by one the provinces of investigation, with 
a view to acquire this power to see totalities. Plato de- 
scribed this third stage of thinking as a power of know- 
ing-by-wholes (totalities). 

" Learn to comprehend each thing in its entire his- 
tory. This is the maxim of science guided by the rea- 
son. Always bear in mind that self-activity is the ulti- 
mate reality ; all dependent being is a fragment ; the 
totality is self-active. The things of the world all have 
their explanation in the manifestation of self-activity in 
its development. All is for the development of indi- 
viduality and ultimate free union of souls in the king- 
dom of God. 

"To sum up; the lowest thinking activity inven- 
tories things, but neglects relations ; the middle stage of 
thinking inventories relations, forces, and processes, and 
sees things in their essences, but neglects self-relation 
or totality ; the highest stage of thinking knows that all 



92 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

independent being has the form of life or mind, and 
that the Absolute is a person, and it studies all things to 
discern traces of the creative energy which is the form 
of the totality. 

" The theory of evolution, comprehended as the 
movement of all things in time and space toward the 
development of individuality — that is to say, toward a 
more perfect manifestation or reflection of the Creator, 
who is above time and space — this theory is (properly 
understood) the theory of the reason. The theory of 
gravitation, as a world-view, on the other hand, is that 
of the understanding." * 

(" Within philosophy itself arises -a fourth stage. 
The attention of the mind in its fourth intention is 
directed not merely to the relation of the ultimate prin- 
ciple to the world (regarded under the phases of par- 
ticular and general existences), but to the method by 
which the relation is traced from one to the other. 
Each higher intention of the mind has for its object 
the previous intention of the mind, and its relation to 
those (if any) preceding it. Thus, the second inten- 
tion (ordinary generalization) notes the relation between 
sensuous perceptions by attending to its own activity in 
perception. The third stage of the mind notes the re- 
lation of all objects of the mind, whether general (of 
the second stage) or special (of the first stage) to one 
principle (of course selected from the objects of second 
intention), and it does this by attending to its own ac- 
tivity in the act of second intention. The fourth inten- 
tion notes the activity of the mind in its third intention, 

* " Illinois School Journal," vol. vii, pp. 444, 445. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 93 

and hence recognizes the form under which the many 
are related to the one — it notes the method of the phil- 
osophical system." )* 

(" The science of formal logic states three laws of 
thought which correspond to these three stages of con- 
sciousness, although they may be looked upon as three 
statements of the same principle. These are the so- 
called principles of identity, contradiction, and excluded 
middle. A is A, or an object is self-identical, is the 
formula for the principle of identity, and it is very 
clear that it expresses the point of view of the category 
of being, or of the first stage of consciousness. It ig- 
nores all distinction, all relation, and hence all environ- 
ment. 

" The principle of contradiction states the environ- 
ment explicitly. Its formula is, Not- A is not identical 
with A, or it is impossible that the same thing can at 
once be and not be, or what is contradictory is unthink- 
able. Here we add in thought to the concept of A its 
contradictory, not- A. We distinguish them, but make 
one of them the limit of the other. We moreover as- 
sert mutual exclusion, hence the finitude of both. Not- 
A is the formula for the relative or dependent, because 
it is expressed only in terms of something else, some- 
thing else limited or negated. Change A, and you 
change the extent or compass of not- A. In the prin- 
ciple of identity the finitude of the object is not ex- 
pressed, but in the principle of contradiction two mutu- 
ally limiting spheres of being are defined. 

" The formula for the principle of excluded middle 

* Vol. 10, p. 230. 



94: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tells us that A either is or is not, or that of two mutual 
contradictories we can affirm existence of only one. 

" This principle adds the concept of totality to that 
of identity and contradiction, and therefore relates to 
the idea of ground or logical condition, the third stage 
of consciousness. Looking upon the total sphere, we 
can reason from the existence or non-existence of a 
part to the existence or non-existence of the other 
parts. It is the principle of the disjunctive judgment. 
The principle of sufficient reason, which is added as a 
fourth law of thought to the three already named, if 
admitted to this rank of laws of thought, expresses not 
only a ground of knowledge, but also a ground of being. 
It means not only that we must have a ground for af- 
firming the existence of any being, but that there must 
be a real ground or reason for the existence of any 
being. Understood in this sense it is the positive state- 
ment of the principle by which we cognize the logical 
condition underlying object and environment. 'Ex- 
cluded middle ' is the negative statement of this princi- 
ple, while ' sufficient reason ' is the positive statement 
of it. The former states that ' either, or ' is true, while 
the latter states that the one is through the other, or 
that the totality is one unity. By it we perceive the 
necessity of causa sui, or self -activity, as the sufficient 
reason for any causd action whatever. By it we affirm 
the truth that all being is grounded in energy, or that 
dynamic existence is the basis of static existence.* 

u We observe in these principles the importance of 
the idea of the negative as the basis of the idea of rela- 

* C. C. Everett's " Science of Thought," p. 236. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 95 

tion. We can call the second stage of consciousness 
the negative stage, because it makes so much of the 
relative. The environment is the negative of the object, 
and its formula is not- A. It is of the utmost impor- 
tance in philosophy to recognize the negative in all 
forms that it assumes. It is the principle of limit, of 
speciality and particularity, hence of all distinction and 
difference ; it is likewise the principle of all contrariety, 
and hence of essence, force, cause, potentiality, and sub- 
stance. "What is most wonderful is that it is the prin- 
ciple of life and thinking, only that in these realms it 
appears as self -related. It sounds absurd, or at least 
pedantic, to hear one speak of self-negativity as the 
principle of mind. But really there is no insight pos- 
sible into self -activity, and the logical conditions of ex- 
perience, without some recognition of the self-negative. 
Self-distinction, as self-negation, is also affirmative, 
because it is identity as well as distinction. 

" We must see that the categories of experience and 
the world are not based on being, or even on essence, 
but that being and essence are based on this negative 
process of self-relation, which we recognize as pure 
energy, causa sui, or personality. This alone is the 
root of individuality, independence, and freedom. The 
idea of God is the unfolding of its complete, positive 
import." *) 

* Vol. 17, pp. 339-341. 



96 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Section V. — The Syllogism. 

The Mind Acts in the Modes of Syllogism: Sensuous Ideas use Second 
Figure, First Figure, Third Figure ; Abstract Ideas use Third Figure, 
First Figure, Second Figure ; Absolute Idea uses Third Figure. 

" The Logic of Sense-Perception* — Sense-percep- 
tion is not a simple act that can be no further analyzed. 
In its most elementary forms one may readily find the 
entire structure of reason. The difference between the 
higher and lower forms of intelligence consists not in 
the presence or absence of phases of thought, but in the 
consciousness of them — the whole is present but is not 
consciously perceived to be present. 

" Perhaps one will reply to this : i The absence of 
consciousness is a lack of the essential structure of rea- 
son with a vengeance.' Let us, however, reassert that 
the whole structure of reason functions not only in 
every act of mind, no matter how low in the scale, 
say even in the animal intelligence — nay, more, in the 
life of the plant which has not yet reached the plane of 
intellect — yes, even in the movement of inorganic mat- 
ter ; in the laws of celestial gravitation there is mani- 
fested the structural framework of reason. ' The Hand 
that made us is divine.' The advance of human intel- 
lect, therefore, consists not in realizing more of the log- 
ical structure of reason, but in attaining a more adequate 
consciousness of its entire scope. 



* This section as far as " Abstract Ideas " is taken from the " Illi- 
nois School Journal," vol. vii, No. 4, pp. 162-166, No. 5, pp. 213-217, 
No. 6, pp. 262-267, and "develops some new insight into the nature 
of sense-perception," which Dr. Harris "has recently discovered 
after many years' study on the subject." 



MAX: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 97 

" Let us imagine, for illustration, an entire circle, and 
liken the self-activity to it. (Self-determination is a 
movement of return to itself like the circle). The low- 
est form of life is not conscious of the smallest arc of 
this circle ; but the animal with the smallest amount of 
sensation is conscious of points or small arcs of it. The 
lowest human intelligence knows at least half a circle. 
The discovery of ethical laws, of philosophic principles, 
of religious truths, gradually brings the remaining arc 
of the entire circle under the focus of consciousness. 

" What is more wonderful is this : there are degrees 
of higher consciousness. The lower consciousness may 
be a mere feeling or emotion— much smoke and little 
flame of intellect. There are, in fact, degrees of emo- 
tional consciousness covering the entire scale. First, 
the small arcs or points ; next, the half-circle ; finally, 
the whole. Think of emotions that concern only selfish 
wants ; next, of emotions that are aesthetic, relating to 
art ; next, of emotions that are ethical and altruistic ; 
then, of religious emotions relating to the vision of 
the whole and perfect. Next above the purely emo- 
tional (all smoke and no flame of abstract intellect), 
think of the long course of human history in which 
man becomes conscious of his nature in more abstract 
forms, and finally reaches science. The progress is 
from object to subject, and finally to the method that 
unites both. We act and then become conscious of our 
action, and finally see its method. 

" The entire structure of reason is revealed in logic. 
Logic is thus a portion, of psychology— it is * rational 
psychology.' 

" Let us examine senserperception and see what logi- 
10 



98 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

cal forms make themselves manifest. Take the most 
ordinary act of seeing ; what is the operation involved 
there ? Is it not the recognition of something ? We 
make out the object first as something in space before 
us ; then as something limited in space ; then as some- 
thing colored ; then as something of a definite shape ; 
and thus on until we recognize in it a definite object 
of a kind familiar to us. The perception of an object 
is thus a series of recognitions — a series of acts of predi- 
cation or judgment : ' This is an object before me in 
space ; it is colored gray ; it looms through the fog like 
a tree ; no, it is pointed like a steeple ; I see what looks 
like a belfry ; I make out the cross on the top of the 
spire ; I recognize it to be a church spire.' Or, again : 
' Something appears in the distance ; it is moving ; it 
moves its limbs ; it is not a quadruped ; it is a biped ; 
it is a boy walking this way ; he has a basket on his 
arm ; it is James.' 

" First we recognize a sense-impression, and through 
that impression an object ; then the nature of the ob- 
ject ; its identities with well-known kinds of objects ; 
its individual differences from those well-known kinds 
of objects. But the differences are recognized as iden- 
tical with well-known kinds of difference. It is the 
combination of different classes or kinds of attributes 
that enables us to recognize the individuality of this 
object. It is like all others and different from all 
others. 

"Let us notice what logical forms we have used. 
First, the act of recognition uses the second figure of 
the syllogism. The second figure says S is M; P is 
M ; hence S is P ; or, in the case *>f sense-perception 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIYE INDIVIDUAL. 99 

(a) this object (the logical subject) has a cross on the 
summit of its spire — or is a cross-crowned spire ; (b) 
church spires are cross- crowned ; (c) hence this object 
is a church spire. 

" We notice that the syllogism is not necessarily true. 
It may be true, but it is not logically certain to be true. 
This uncertainty attaches to sense-perception. Its first 
act is to recognize, and this takes place in the second 
figure of the syllogism which has " valid modes " (or 
necessary conclusions) only in the negative. But sense- 
perception uses in-valid modes, i. e., syllogisms which 
do not furnish correct inferences. Sense-perception, 
using a valid mode of the second figure (the mode called 
' Camestres '), might have said : 

" This object is cross-crowned. 

" No natural tree is cross-crowned. 

" Hence this object can not be a natural tree. 

" (S is M ; no P is M ; hence S is not P.) 

" The structure of reason as revealed in logic shows 
us always universal, particular, and individual ideas 
united in the form of inference or a syllogism. 

" Grammar shows us the logical structure of lan- 
guage. Language is the instrument of, and reveals the 
structure of reason. Grammar finds that all speech has 
the form of a judgment. A is B — something is some- 
thing. All sense-perception is a recognition of this sort : 
Something (an object before me) is something (an attri- 
bute or class which I have known before). But this 
recognition takes place through some common mark 
or property that belongs to the object and to the well- 
known class — this mark or property being the middle 
term. Hence the judgment is grounded on other judg- 



100 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ments, and the whole act of sense-perception is a syl- 
logism. The mind acts in the form of a syllogism, but 
is dimly conscious or quite unconscious of the form in 
which it acts when it is engaged in sense-perception. I 
perceive that this is a church steeple. But I do not re- 
flect on the form of mental activity by which I have 
recognized it. If asked ' How do you know that it is 
a church steeple?' then I elevate into consciousness 
some of the steps of the process and say, ' Because I 
saw its cross-crowned summit.' This implies the syllo- 
gism in the second figure : (a) Church spires have cross- 
crowned summits ; (b) this object has a cross-crowned 
summit ; (c) hence it is a church spire. But this is not 
a necessary conclusion — it is not a ' valid mode ' of the 
second figure. The mind knows this, but is not con- 
scious of it at the time. An objection may be raised 
which will at once draw into consciousness a valid 
mode. Let it be objected, 'The object that you see is 
a monument in the cemetery.' The reply is, ' Monu- 
ments do not have belfries, but this object has a bel- 
fry.' Here sense-perception has noted a further attri- 
bute — the belfry. Its conclusion is simply negative : 
* It is not a monument, because it has a belfry,' and it 
concludes this in a ' valid mode ' of the second figure. 
(a) No monuments have belfries ; (b) this object has a 
belfry ; (c) hence it is not a monument. If the prem- 
ises (a and b) are correct, the conclusion necessarily fol- 
lows. 

" In the first act of recognition the second figure is 
used. The characteristic of the second figure is this : 
Its middle term is the predicate in both propositions 
(the major proposition or premise, and the minor prop- 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIYE INDIVIDUAL. 101 

osition or premise). There are four ' modes' in this 
figure which are valid ; that is to say, four modes in 
which necessary truth may be inferred. The conclu- 
sions of these are all negative, and run as follows : 

" 1. No S is P (this is the 'mode ' called ' Cesare') : 
(a) no P is M, (b) all S is M, (c) hence no S is P ; or, 
(a) all P is M, (b) no S is M, (c) hence no S is P. 

"2. Some S is not P (this is the 'mode' called 
'Festino'): (a) no P is M, (b) some S is M, (c) 
hence some S is not P ; or, (the 'mode' called 'Bar- 
oco '), (a) all P is M, (b) some S is not M, (c) hence 
some S is not P.* 

" In the first figure the middle term is subject of the 
major premise and predicate of the minor premise, thus : 

(a) M is P ; (b) S is M ; (c)hence S is P.f 

" In the second figure (as already shown) the middle 
term is the predicate of both premises, thus : (a) P is M ; 

(b) S is M ; (c) hence S is P. 

" In the third figure the middle term is the subject 

* " Let the reader not familiar with logic who desires to learn 
more of it than is explained here read the first eight chapters of 
Aristotle's ' Prior Analytics,' and he will see the subject as presented 
by its first discoverer. Or, any ordinary compend of logic will give 
the essential details. For this psychological purpose note in partic- 
ular the nature of the three figures which are distinguished by the 
way in which they employ the middle term (the term which unites 
or divides the subject and predicate of the conclusion)." 

f " S is used to denote the word subject ; M to denote the word 
middle (term) ; P is used to denote the word predicate. S and P 
are respectively subject and predicate of the proposition that ex- 
presses the conclusion or inference. M is the middle term that 
brings together S and P, as it is subject or predicate to either term. 
S and P are called ' terms,' and the two first propositions are called, 
respectively, 'major' and 'minor' premise." 



102 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of both premises, thus : (a) M is P ; (d) M is S ; (c) 
hence S is P. 

" In tikie first figure we unite the subject (S) to the 
predicate (P) because of a middle term (M) that contains 
the subject, but which is itself contained in the predi- 
cate : All men are mortal ; Socrates is a man ; hence 
Socrates is mortal. Here man is the middle term (M) 
which contains Socrates, the subject (S), and is con- 
tained in the more general class of mortal beings, the 
predicate (P). 

" In the second figure we unite the subject to the 
predicate, because of a middle term that includes both ; 
that is to say, is predicate of both (because the predicate 
includes its subject). All men are language-using 
beings ; no monkeys are language-using beings ; hence 
no monkeys are men. Here monkeys are discriminated 
from men by the middle term, ' language-using,' which 
includes all men and excludes all monkeys. 

" In the third figure we unite the subject to the 
predicate because of a middle term which is included in 
both, i. e., is subject of both (because the subject is 
included in the predicate). All men are animals ; all 
men are rational ; hence some animals are rational. 
Here animals (the subject) is united with rational (the 
predicate) through the middle term, man. 

" We have now called attention to the use of the 
second figure as the primary form of sense-perception. 
We shall next show how the first figure comes to the 
aid of the second figure in perceiving. 

"How Sense- Perception uses the First Figure of the 
Syllogism- to re-enforce its First Act, which takes place 
in the Second Figure. — We have asserted that sense- 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 103 

perception uses the second figure of the syllogism in its 
first act. The proof of this may be found in the fact that 
the object can not be perceived except in so far as it is 
recognized or identified. Identification takes place in 
the second figure of the syllogism. Before one can 
notice the differences of a thing one must identify it as 
an object. And he must identify it as a sensation before 
he can identify the sensation as a sensation of an object. 
One may not be able to take account of differences, ex- 
cept in so far as he has a basis of identity as a ground to 
go upon. The primary form of seizing the object — the 
form of 'presentation,' as certain psychologists call it 
— is that of the second figure. But immediately after 
its presentation in the second figure begins the activity 
of the first figure. 

" JSTo sooner have I recognized and classified the ob- 
ject by one of its marks than I begin to look after the 
other marks which I have learned in my previous expe- 
rience to belong to objects of its class. I recognize the 
object to be a church steeple by its cross-crowned sum- 
mit, and begin at once to look for other characteristics of 
a church steeple, such as a belfry, for example. I also 
look for the well-known outlines of a spire, for the roof 
of the church to which it is united, and so on. 

" If the first step of the process of sense-perception 
is in the form of the second figure, the second step is 
in the form of the first figure. By the second figure I 
have identified the object as a church spire. To classify 
is to refer the new object to what is well known. It is 
possible now to re-enforce the present perception by 
bringing to it all the stored-up treasures of experience. 
I begin at once to draw out of the treasure house of the 



104: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

general class a series of inferences : If it is a church 
spire it is likely to have a belfry — possibly a clock, a 
steep slope above, shingled with slate or wood, joined 
below to the body of the cbnrch at the ridge of the 
roof or else at the corner of the edifice, etc. Hence I 
look again and again ; being now helped by my previous 
experience, I collect much information in a very short 
interval of time. The form of this second activity in 
the first figure is (a) M is P ; (h) S is M ; (c) S is P. 

" 'This object is a church steeple' is the conclusion 
of the second figure or first act of perception. Then 
by the first figure I conclude : (some) church steeples 
have belfrys ; this is a church steeple ; hence it has (or 
may have) a belfry. 

" And I continue to look for characteristics which 
the first figure infers to be present in a steeple. I see 
a dark opening at the bottom of the steeple and I infer 
the existence of a belfry by the second figure, thus : (a) 
belfries have the appearances of a dark opening at the 
base of the steeple ; (b) this object has that appearance ; 
(c) hence it is a belfry. 

" Thus to and fro moves the syllogizing without com- 
ing to consciousness. The mind acts without reflecting 
on the form of its acts. The classification of the object 
being effected by the second figure, I go on to infer by 
the first figure what I may expect to find there, namely, 
a bell, and I look for it and see a portion of a wheel in 
the dark opening. I infer a bell from this. The steps 
are very complex ; I recognized the wheel by some char- 
acteristic appearance that belongs to a wheel. Thus we 
have a series of middle terms, each one of which has 
been used first as predicate in a syllogism of the sec- 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 1Q5 

ond figure and then as middle term in one of the first 
figure. 

"The modes of the syllogism ordinarily used by 
sense-perception are not the so-called valid modes. That 
is, they deduce only possible or probable knowledge at 
best. The cross-crowned object may be something else 
thau a steeple ; the dark space below may be something 
else than a belfry ; the wheel may be there with no bell 
attached to the axle ; the axle may not be there ; the 
appearance of the wheel may be deceptive. Sense-per- 
ception abounds in deception. The second figure, of 
identification, is corrected by the use of the first figure, 
of deduction, which offers a number of additional marks 
for verification. By verification we decrease the possibil- 
ity of error by the law of probabilities. Every addition- 
al mark verified increases the probability immensely. 

" The first figure acts in very subtle ways in the first 
stages of a given observation. I look out through the 
fog in a given direction and see some object so dimly 
that I should not be able to say what it is. But I know 
where I am and that in the direction where I am look- 
ing there is a village. In a village church steeples are 
wont to be seen, and hence I am led to expect that the 
most prominent object will be such a steeple. Here 
the first figure acts to suggest what I may expect to see. 
It acts in a not-valid mood, thus : (a) Some villages have 
churches with steeples ; (b) this is a village ; (c) it has 
(or may have) a steeple. And, again (second figure) : 
(a) Steeples are prominent objects ; (h) you behold a 
prominent object ; (<?) it is (or may be) a steeple. 

" The identification of the present place (the ' here ') 
and the present time (the 'now ') leads to a number of 



106 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

anticipations of perception by the aid of the first fig- 
ure. And these lead to verification by means of the 
second figure. 

" Besides these very general anticipations there are 
more abstract ones, and even a priori anticipations 
which guide our sense-perception. The general idea of 
space as a major premise suggests externality and the 
anticipation that the object is limited on all sides ; and 
sense-perception is directed to look for boundaries. 

" Next, the idea of time suggests movement, and the 
object is examined for changes. 

" Then the idea of causality suggests functions, and 
these, too, are anticipated, and the object is observed to 
find its relations to other things. These 'anticipa- 
tions of perception' are not conscious ordinarily, al- 
though they may become so, in case doubt suggests in- 
vestigation and verification. 

" The educational significance of these facts of sense- 
perception is obvious. The school labors to give the 
pupil the results of human experience. This stored-up 
material furnishes anticipations of experience to each so 
that he may know what to look for when the object is 
presented to him. In a brief time he verifies all that 
experience has recorded of an object. By the first fig- 
ure of the syllogism the individual re-enforces his pres- 
ent vision by all his past experience. More than this, 
he re-enforces it by the experience of the race. This 
makes human progress possible, and by accumulation 
develops civilization. 

" To teach powers of quick perception it is not ne- 
cessary simply to use one's senses (although a false psy- 
chology often tells us so). It is necessary to store up, 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 107 

in the form of scientific generalizations, the observa- 
tions of the race, and then (for this is not all) learn to 
verify these observations and critically test them so as 
not passively to mimic the former observers and repeat 
their errors. To master the results of the past sharp- 
ens one's observation by setting up in the mind a 
myriad anticipations of experience which test and cross- 
question observation at every turn, and make the alert 
and critical observer. One learns how to eliminate the 
personal coefficient from his observations. This per- 
sonal coefficient is due to the individual peculiarity of 
the observer — to his defects and weaknesses. As no 
two persons are likely to have the same defects of sense- 
perception, it is possible for each one to correct the er- 
rors due to his own personal coefficient by the aid of 
the observations of others. 

" Formal logic has fallen into great contempt in mod- 
ern times. This contempt is not deserved. The study 
of logic as an industry by which we are to learn the art 
of reasoning — this perhaps deserves all the contempt it 
has received ; but as a science of the spiritual structure 
of cognition — a science of the forms of perception — it 
is not contemptible. 

" Formal logic, as the exposition of the structure of 
mind — the forms of its functions — is the most impor- 
tant part of psychology, and a key to all the unconscious 
activities of the mind. Treatises on logic usually hold 
the doctrine that logic is the form of reflection, and of 
conscious reflection alone. Hence they suppose that 
sense-perception and emotion are not syllogistic in their 
structure. Hegel was the first to show explicitly that 
every form of life has a syllogistic structure, and that 



108 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

even the inorganic world is dominated by the same 
form. He did not, it is true, make tins analysis of 
sense-perception which I have here given, but he 
pointed out the dependence of the first figure on the 
third and likewise that of the second on the first, for 
the proof of its major premise. Many years ago, when 
engaged on Aristotle's ' Prior Analytics,' I was struck 
with the doctrine of the three figures and inquired : 
"What significance have these in psychology? Do they 
not mark important distinctions in the functions of mind ? 
I was not successful in finding the subject treated in the 
literature of logic. Hegel alone seemed to have looked 
to the distinction of figures as having a profound sig- 
nificance. The major premise of each figure needs 
proof ; that of the first figure is proved by the third ; 
that of the third by the second figure ; and finally the 
major premise of the second figure requires the first 
figure for its proof. Hence Hegel changed the order 
that Aristotle gave for the second and third figures. In 
the psychology of sense-perception, as we have ex- 
pounded it here, we should change the order of the use 
of the figures to the following : second, first, third. 

" Next, we must inquire what function, if any, the 
third figure has in sense-perception. We shall answer 
this question by attempting to show that it is the form 
by which the mind generates its universals— -arrives at 
classes, genera, species — in short, the major premise of 
the first figure.* 



* *' A POSTSCRIPT FURTHER EXPLANATORY OF THE FIRST FIGURE. — 

There are four valid moods in the first figure — four moods in which 
a conclusion may be deduced with absolute certainty from the prem- 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 109 

"ITow General Concepts arise. How Sense-Percep- 
tion uses the Third Figure of the-Syllogism to store up 
its Experience in General Terms. — The activity of the 
second figure gives occasion to that of the first figure. 
The stored-up experience leads to a number of antici- 
pations of perception, which are verified or tested. 
But, by what process do classes, species, genera, and all 
the universals which furnish the major premise of the 
first figure arise ? The answer to this brings us to the 
consideration of the third figure. 

ises given. That is to say, if the premises are true in these four 
moods the conclusion must be true. These are as follows : 

" 1. (a) All M are P ; (b) all S are M ; (c) hence all S are P. Illus- 
trating this symbolism, (a) all men are mortal (all M are P, or all 
of the middle term, men, are mortal, mortal being the predicate of 
the conclusion) ; (b) all Indians are men (all S are M, or all of the 
subject of the conclusion, Indians are men, the middle term) ; (c) 
hence all Indians are mortal (all S are P, all of the subject, Indians, 
are mortal, the predicate). This mode is called Barbara. 

" 2. (a) No M are P ; (b) all S are M ; (c) hence no S are P. This 
mode is called Celarent. 

" 3. (a) All M are P ; (b) some S are M ; (c) hence some S are P. 
This is called Darii. 

" 4. (a) No M are P ; (b) some S are M ; (c) hence some S are not 
P. This is called Ferio. 

" There are sixty-four ' moods ' possible in each figure, as one may 
see by calculating the permutations possible in three terms, each one 
of which has four possible forms. Each term, S, M, P, may be uni- 
versal affirmative — all are (indicated in logic by the letter a) ; uni- 
versal negation — none are (indicated by the letter e); particular 
affirmative — some are (indicated by the letter?) ; particular negative 
— some are not (indicated by the letter o). But of the sixty-four 
possible moods in each figure only a few are valid or draw necessary 
conclusions. There are only four valid moods in the first figure ; 
the same in the second figure ; and six valid moods in the third 
figure." 

11 



HO INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

"The third figure necessarily comes into activity 
after the second and first figures. This will be obvious 
when we consider its nature. Its schema is : 
" M is P. 
" M is S. 
" Hence S is P. 

" Man is a biped. 
" Man is rational. 
" Hence (some) rational being is a biped. 

" Here man is the middle term, and it is the subject 
in both premises. 

" In the third figure, as used in sense-perception, the 
middle term is the object perceived, and the two ex- 
tremes are connected to each other by the fact that they 
both belong to the same object. 

"Xow, since the middle term is subsumed under 
both extremes, it follows that only particular affirmative 
conclusions can be made in it — we can only say some S 
is P and not all S is P. Some rational beings are 
bipeds. 

"There are six valid moods in this figure — three 
particular affirmative and three particular negative con- 
clusions. These valid moods, however — useful as they 
are in deducing necessary conclusions — like the valid 
moods of the second and first figures, are, nevertheless, 
not of much use in sense-perception. Certainty in ex- 
perience comes from repetition and verification, rather 
than from single necessary conclusions. 

" The third figure follows the first and second fig- 
ures, and can not precede their activity because each of 
its premises presupposes the action of identifying. The 
object M is S (S is recognized in the object). The ob- 



MAN:. A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. \\± 

ject M is P (P is now recognized). Thus there are two 
identifications, one for each premise (both using the 
second figure of the syllogism), before the third figure 
can begin to function. 

" Now it acts and connects the two phases of the ob- 
ject (S P) making a new predication which may serve 
for a new major premise of the first figure. Hereafter 
we may say : Such objects as those (M) are S P, and 
when we see one of this kind we may recognize it in 
the second figure at once. 

" Let us suppose that our object before had been a 
black eagle, a well-known object. Now we recognize 
eagle and white head by two acts of the second figure ; 
white-headed (bald-headed) eagle makes a new class, 
derived by the third figure. Hereafter an object may 
be recognized as white-headed (or bald-headed) eagle by 
the second figure, and all its other peculiarities stored 
up in observation deduced by the first figure. 

" The second figure identifies in sense-perception ; 
the first figure anticipates further identification ; but it 
is the third figure that distinguishes, divides, and deter- 
mines, and, by making a new synthesis of already fa- 
miliar marks, defines new classes. The new class arises 
by adding a special new attribute to an old class. Every 
new combination of marks discovered in an object is 
potentially a new class. All other specimens discovered 
like it are recognized, and their peculiarities, stored up 
by experience, may be deduced by the first figure so as 
to abridge the act of perception and make it swift and 
compendious. 

" The third figure notices the striking characteristics 
of an object, and unites them through this middle term 



112 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of the object itself — these are characteristics of one and 
the same object and distinguish it from other objects, 
making it belong to the S-P class. 

" Inasmuch as the characteristics S and P exist to- 
gether in the same object, there is some deeper unity to 
be sought for them. This leads to the application of 
the principle of causality. S and P are related in some 
way causally. They are means, or ends, or agents, or 
results, in the same process. The a priori principle of 
causality here acts as an " anticipation of perception " 
and sets mental activity in the third figure to looking 
for a synthesis of causality between the attributes dis- 
covered in the same object. 

" The causal relation has many phases ; these fall 
under two classes — (a) subjective and (h) objective, (a) 
as relating to manifestation to sense — color, noise (espe- 
cially), taste, touch, smell; the object may be obtru- 
sive on our attention — conspicuous, attractive, monpoliz- 
ing attention. Here the causative energy is subjective in 
the sense that its effect is chiefly upon our senses and not 
an essential element in the process of the object itself. 

" (h) The causal relation is that of self -activity for 
the object's own sake. The activity of limbs in loco- 
motion — legs, fins, wings, or in prehension as arms, 
hands, claws, jaws, or in growth implying assimilation, 
as of trees, etc. The object is a producer of effects on 
its environment. 

" The activity of the syllogism thus far treated is 
supposed to be unconscious in various degrees ; but the 
activity in the third figure comes nearest to being a con- 
scious one because it notes what is new and announces 
the results of synthesis in a new definition. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. H3 

" It would seem from this study of the third figure 
in sense-perception that the formation of general terms 
is not conducted after the manner supposed in ordinary 
treatises on psychology. We do not proceed by abstrac- 
tion, comparison, generalization, etc., to classification. 
We make a synthesis of traits, and, although we have only 
one case before us, this synthesis is a definition of a pos- 
sible class. If we observe a second, like the first, we 
use this synthetic concept (S P) and subsume the object 
under it. We recognize by the second figure any other 
specimen of the same. 

" Thus each synthesis performed by the third figure 
becomes a class definition under which an indefinite 
amount of experience may be stored up by the second 
and first figures. Should no new examples occur the 
synthetic characteristic S P drops into the background 
and remains an individual mark, or it may get lost alto- 
gether and forgotten. 

" The lower use of the third figure notes the obtru- 
sive characteristics — those which strike the senses first 
— and usually not the characteristics important to the 
object itself. Its means of self-preservation are most 
important to the object ; its means of procuring sub- 
sistence and defending itself — what it uses as a means 
of survival in its struggle for existence. 

" Herein is objective causality manifest, and our gen- 
eral terms get something objective to correspond to 
them. In the case of subjective characteristics which 
are prolific in giving names to the lower varieties, we 
do not have an objective universal named but only a 
subjective — a constant for the form of obtrusion on the. 
sense. For example, shade-tail for squirrel (skia-oura, 



114: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

sJeiourus, skia — shadow from sJca, to cover, and oura, a 
tail. See Skeat's 4 Etymology '). The striking charac- 
teristic of the squirrel is his bushy, upturned tail. The 
animal seated on his haunches struck the Greek imagi- 
nation as an animal sitting in the shadow of his tail ; or 
his tail appeared as a materialized shadow of him. The 
name falcon is from its curved beak ; here the name 
indicates the objective causal process — its instrument of 
action. So rodent is a gnawer, an example of objective 
causal process. Cow, and the many words for kine, 
come from gu, to low, to bellow (old Indo-European 
root— see Fick I, 577) ; just as Bos, Bousm the Greek 
and Latin come from the root Bu, to low, to bellow, 
(see Fick IY, 178). The most important thing about 
the use of the third figure is this apprehension of caus- 
ality — this formation of concepts based on the causal 
connection between two attributes belonging to the 
object. This is an explaining process — the reaching of 
a universal that is universal because it is a process that 
begets many examples — the self -producing power of 
life. 

" The action of the third figure, as we have seen, 
produces a definition because it unites two characteristics 
in one object. The third figure is that of definition or 
determination. The definition may or may not be valid 
for many subsequent specimens. The test is the further 
experience which stamps the definition with currency 
or leaves it an exceptional case. 

" Says Aristotle : ' When one thing without difference 
invariably prevails, there is then first a universal in the 
soul ; for the singular is indeed perceived by the sense, 
but sense is of the universal — as of man, but not the 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. H5 

man Callias.' It perceives individually, but it is the 
universal, or potentially universal, that sense perceives 
in the individual. 

" For further illustration here are a few examples 
of the action of sense-perception in the third figure, 
by which two attributes are united by a causal idea: 
Tree, evergreen, resinous sap (resisting the action 
of cold). Bird, hooked beak, for tearing its prey. 
Bird, sharp talons, clutches living prey. Beast, chews 
cud, extra stomach. Beast, chews cud, divided hoofs, 
(this contrast to the former is a mere subjective class, 
no causality being obvious). Beast, large pupil to 
eye, prowls at night. Desert plant, dew-absorbing, no 
rain. 

" The second figure classifies, using a property as its 
middle term. The first figure adds to the present ob- 
servation the results of past observation, using the 
class as a middle term. The third figure, using the 
object as a middle term, perceives a new property and 
adds it to the class, making a new definition of a pos- 
sible subclass of which the object before it is an ex- 
ample. 

" There are three terms in sense perception, the ob- 
ject, its class, its properties. The object is middle term 
in the third figure, the class in the first figure, and a 
property in the second. 

"We have seen that a conception is not a mental 
picture, but a definition. Here we have found the pro- 
cess by which the definition arises. 

" The ultimate consequences of this principle in psy- 
chology are important as touching the doctrine of cate- 
gories of the mind. Sense-perception uses these cate- 



116 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

gories unconsciously. Reflection subsequently discovers 
their existence and finally their genesis. The funda- 
mental act of mind, as self-determining, discriminates 
self from the special modification in which the self finds 
itself. The self is the general capacity for feeling, will- 
ing, knowing ; but it is at a given moment determined 
as one of these, if not exclusively, at least predomi- 
nantly. Every act of perception begins with identifica- 
tion (second figure). This is an act of removal of the 
special limitation from the object — a dissolving of it in 
the general self as a capacity for any and all sensation, 
volition, or thought. It is this first act that gives rise 
to the category of being, and the category of negation 
born with it is next perceived. All other categories 
arise from division of this most general of categories 
(summun genus). The third figure shows how these 
arise by progressive definition. The categories, in so 
far as they do not imply in their definition any proper- 
ties derived from sense-perception, are called categories 
of pure thought or logic. Hegel undertakes to show the 
process of progressive definition by which these arise, 
in his logic (' Wissenschaft der Logik'). 

"There are six valid moods in the third figure, 
named, respectively: 

" Darapti — all M is P ; all M is S ; hence some S 
is P. 

" Disamis — some M is P ; all M is S ; hence some 
S is P. 

" Datisi — all M is P ; some M is S ; hence some 
Sis P. 

" Felajpton — no M is P ; all M is S ; hence some S 
is not P. 



MAN; A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. H7 

" Bocardo — some M is not P ; all M is S ; hence 
some S is not P. 

" Ferison — no M is P ; some M is S ; hence some 
S is not P." 

Abstract Ideas use the Syllogism. — " The middle 
term in this syllogism (third figure), as used in sense- 
perception, is commonly individual or singular, and not 
a universal. It is always in the form of, this object is 
thus and so, and again thus and so. For example : 
This individual is web-footed, it swims in the water; 
the synthesis has to find some causal relation between 
web-footed and swimming. Unconscious syllogizing 
forms the warp and woof of human experience, and 
deposits, as a result, the larger of general terms in lan- 
guage, and especially the words expressing classes, spe- 
cies, and genera. Any coincidence that it notices, 
whether accidental or essential, gets from related into 
a general class through this syllogistic process, and is 
handed over to the first figure, which keeps charge of 
the deductive first figure. From this it is handed to 
the second figure of immediate perception for verin'ca- 
tion or refutation. If the generalization has been rash, 
it gets quickly eliminated ; but if it arose from a real 
insight into a causal relation it gets confirmed and es- 
tablished. One more very wonderful thing ; the causal 
idea it is that carries one ov^r from the particular indi- 
vidual to the general. The causal activity reaches re- 
sults as examples, but is not exhausted thereby. One, 
therefore, can make many things, and all will belong 
to one family — all will bear the marks of the force 
which is a universal. All true classification presup- 
poses the identity of generic power lying back of the 



118 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

immediate phenomena, which are only results of its 
activity." * 

Absolute Idea uses the Third Figure. — " It is ener- 
gy that changes quality into quantity. Energy produces 
a first result — as a first, it is simply different from all 
others. Such difference is simply and solely quality. 
Let the same energy continue to act, and it repeats its 
result indefinitely, and thus arises a class of similar 
terms, and extension and quantity come to exist. In 
quantity has banished the qualitative, and a new species 
of difference has arisen ; difference of real being re- 
mains, the second is independent of the first and a dif- 
ferent real being from the first, but qualitatively it may 
be the same, possessing all the attributes of the first. 
In fact, so far as it belongs to the same class, it would 
be the same qualitatively. 

"But qualitatively there can be no such thing as 
difference of individuality ; for qualitative difference is 
always and everywhere a dependence on, and correla- 
tion with another, and it takes both to make up an indi- 
vidual. The whole qualitative sphere must be in the 
individual, at least in the form of first entelechy ; that 
is to say, in a form dependent upon the self -activity of 
the individual to realize it, or else there is no true indi- 
viduation, but only difference as a manifestation of 
dependence, partiality, and phenomenality of being. 
"Whence the strange fact of the use of the third figure in 
sense-perception, and of its generation of universals 
from singulars. Such generation is the product of the 

* From a lecture given at Concord, July, 1887 : " The Syllogism 
of Aristotle, as compared with that of Hegel." 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 119 

reason, unconsciously furnishing to some the idea of 
causal activity or energy — its highest form being self- 
activity as reason or thought. 

" In each of the figures of the syllogism is furnished 
a fundamental category of the reason as the principal 
of its activity. For the lowest and first there is given 
the category of reality, which can be first or second ; 
that is to say, immediate or self -mediated, but never 
mediate, or, in other words, never the predicate of any- 
thing. It must be a real as basis of all that sense per- 
ceives. It must be a real as the general which ener- 
gizes to produce any and every object of sense-percep- 
tion or any higher real being. Real being is the first of 
the primordial ideas given in the constitution of all in- 
telligence, even the animals being governed by it the- 
oretically and practically. It governs perception in the 
syllogistic process of the second figure. The principle 
presiding over the second figure of the syllogism is that 
of the formal cause producing and resolving under the 
universal the entire realm of difference and particu- 
larity. The principle presiding over the third figure of 
the syllogism is that of energy as creative causality. 
It seeks the unity or synthesis of difference in causal 
energy, and furnishes the principles for the first figure 
in so far as they are derived from experience. 

" The third figure, moreover, represents the form of 
the deepest and most subtle insights of the rational soul. 
One might affirm, indeed, that it is the essential form of 
the theoretical activity of the Reason itself in its imme- 
diate perception of principle. For a principle as en- 
ergy involves the production of distinction or differ- 
ence, the procession of the one to the many, a primor- 



120 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

dial self-separation, and all true principles are of this 
kind. But such principles involve the unfolding of 
difference or distinction upon a real being that eternally 
abides the same, even in the activity of distinction or 
self -distinction, if we may so call the knowing which as 
subject knows itself as object. It is a supreme synthe- 
sis of distinction in its highest and most complete form 
— the root and source of all difference in the universe. 

" This sharpest difference appears, too, as an identity 
of real being, so that both the subject and the object 
are real and one in their distinctions. This is the 
transfigured third figure which unites two distinctions 
through energy that it finds united in one single indi- 
vidual as middle term. The third figure is essentially 
the figure which is transfigured in the divine theoretical 
activity. We must, on the other hand, hold that the 
first figure, when transfigured, is that of the divine 
creative will — a deductive syllogism that gives by the 
middle term of particularity to determine individuals in 
their activity. The second figure gives us the aesthetic 
of mind in its poetic activity, a symbol-making, corre- 
spondence-discovering, creation-imitating activity, which 
identifies the particular of sense-perception with its 
universal archetype." * 

III. — It is not hoped to make the thought clearer 
by adding another illustration, but it may be helpful to 
give an illustration in something the same manner as 
given in class. As the students are becoming familiar 
with the subject and can give their own illustrations, 



* From a lecture given at Concord, July, 1887 ; " Theory of the 
Syllogism." 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 121 

the different points are taken up and explained. As a 
person is coming up the walk, something white upon 
the grass attracts his attention, He knows already 
what a real object is, and that it exists independent of 
his body in space. He recognizes the grass, the walk, 
and surrounding objects. The color white is also known 
to him. Since these are familiar, the process of identi- 
fication is rapid, but the object is unknown. Cotton- 
cloth, with which he is familiar, is white, and he uncon- 
sciously reasons: This object is white; a piece of 
cotton-cloth is white ; therefore, this may be a piece of 
cotton-cloth. 

The middle term of his reasoning is the attribute 
white. The unknown object is white. A familiar ob» 
ject, cotton-cloth, is white, and he identifies the object 
and perceives a piece of white cloth. The middle term 
white is predicate in both premises. A necessary con- 
clusion is not drawn. But how is this conclusion ren- 
dered more sure? By continuing the process and veri- 
fying the conclusion, or by correcting it. He approaches 
the object. He recognizes the warp and woof, the text- 
ure of the cotton, and confirms his perception, or he 
finds that the object has properties which do not corre- 
spond with the familiar object cotton-cloth. But what- 
ever he perceives is by the same process of recognition 
and identification. Identification proceeds by the invalid 
modes of the second figure. But if some one else had 
called his attention to the white object on the grass and 
asked him to perceive snow, he wquld have reasoned in 
a valid mode of the second figure s as, snow never lies on 
the ground in warm weather; this object lies on the ground 
in warm weather ; therefore, this object is not snow. 
12 



122 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Joined with the act of recognition in the second 
figure of the syllogism, is the activity of the first fignre 
of the syllogism. All the person's previous knowledge 
of cotton-cloth comes to the surface and he unconsciously 
syllogizes : All cotton-cloth has threads which cross each 
other and has a fine, soft texture ; this object is cotton- 
cloth ; therefore, this object will have these properties. 
Then continues the process of identification, and at a 
single glance a series of qualities appear, the identifica- 
tion being made through the syllogistic process of the 
second figure. In the first figure cotton-cloth is the 
middle term and is subject of the major premise and 
predicate of the minor. 

Or perhaps the object could not be recognized as 
cotton-cloth. Other familiar white objects come before 
the mind, and through the repetition of the former syl- 
logistic processes of the second and the first figures, the 
granular structure is noticed, the small white particles 
are seen as crystals, the saline quality is perceived by 
the taste and the object identified with a familiar ob- 
ject, salt. 

ISTow begins the syllogistic activity in the third figure, 
the object itself being the middle term. This object is 
observed to be white, to be made up of small particles, 
to have a saline taste, to remain scattered on the green 
grass of the lawn and other properties identified by the 
former processes, We have then a " series of premises 
furnished by perception and suggested by experience 
all relating to the middle term, the object," as 

This is salt. 

It has a saline taste. 

It is made up of crystals. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 123 

It is scattered loosely over the grass. 

Now take any one of these premises and add another 
relating to the same middle term, the object, and a con- 
clusion may be drawn which adds in some degree a new 
element to experience ; as, this is salt ; it lies scattered 
on the grass ; salt gets spilled by careless grocer boys. 
Or, this is salt ; it has a saline taste ; salt mixed with 
other ingredients renders those saline. For the pecul- 
iarity of the third figure of the syllogism is that it per- 
ceives causal activity. By connecting one attribute 
with another the causal activity is discerned. JSTo causal 
activity as such is seen by the senses, but the object is 
seen in one state and then in another and the mind 
makes the synthesis which furnishes the new ideas of 
experience. This process is through the activity of the 
third figure of the syllogism. 

To continue the illustration for the plane of con- 
scious reflection or that of abstract ideas. The chemist 
or investigator in studying and analyzing salt proceeds 
first by the third figure of the syllogism, because in 
the plane of thought involving processes and relations, 
the perception of causal activity by which new ele- 
ments of knowledge are obtained is of chief interest. 
He proceeds : This object crystallizes according to the 
cubical order; this object has received this shape 
through the action of heat and water ; therefore, crys- 
tallization in the form of cubes is caused by the ac- 
tion of heat and water. This synthesis, as a conclu- 
sion, remains in experience summed up in the first 
figure of the syllogism, as : All crystallization in the 
shape of cubes is formed by the action of heat and 
water; salt has crystallization in the form of cubes; 



124: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

therefore, salt lias received the action of heat and water. 
Or, again, in the third figure, the chemist sees that salt 
with other substances when subjected to heat in the 
laboratory presents a new appearance, and he reasons : 
This salt has been subjected to heat ; this salt has been 
changed into substances having different appearance; 
therefore, the action of heat causes chemical change. 
And by means of the first figure he embodies this 
result, sure to the extent of one experiment, in his ex- 
perience, and keeps it as a working hypothesis. Chem- 
ical change is caused by the action of heat; salt has 
undergone chemical change; therefore salt has been 
subjected to the action of heat. This is the stored-up 
knowledge for finding new properties of the same ob- 
ject, or for identifying and classifying a new object. 
For instance, in the second figure, a new property of 
the same object; this object has now a disagreeable 
odor ; chlorine has a disagreeable odor ; therefore, this 
may be chlorine. Or, the investigator finds another ob- 
ject; he identifies the crystallization as that of the 
cubical order and proceeds by the second figure : This 
object has crystallization in cubes, a familiar object of 
silver-gray color, namely, iron pyrites has such crystal- 
lization ; therefore, this may be iron pyrites. Through 
this process of analysis and identification of one prop- 
erty after another he classifies this new object and 
hands it over to the first figure again as a result of past 
experience. 

Thought in the plane of the absolute idea uses the 
third figure of the syllogism, for this stage of thinking 
is concerned with the perception of causal activity in 
all its phases. As in the preceding example : This ob- 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 125 

ject crystallizes according to the cubical order; this 
object has received its shape through the action of heat 
and water ; therefore, crystallization in the form of 
cubes is caused by the action of heat and water. But 
the perception of causal activity from this third stage 
of thinking includes not only the modification through 
the environment, but also sees that the mode of crystal- 
lization is due likewise to the nature of the activity in 
the object itself and that the environment only assists, 
but does not produce the nature of the energy of the 
object. 

This phase of thinking does not need the first figure 
of the syllogism as a medium for stored-up knowledge, 
for, by the same mind, the perception of the nature of 
this activity will always be the same and true at all 
times ; nor does it need the second figure of identifica- 
tion, for the identification was included in the one act of 
rational insight. In this power of the reason we see 
the nature of creative thought. 

Section VI. — The Third Stage of Thinking : The Absolute 
Idea> or the Beason. 

Eational Insight knows : Causality, Self-cause^— Space, Time — Quality, 
Quantity — Change, Self-activity — Life, Individuality, Absolute Per- 
sonality — Absolute Thought ; manifested in T^ruth, Beauty, Goodness. 

" Space and time have been considered as the pre- 
suppositions or preconditions in all experience. Three 
grades of knowing have been found by analyzing expe- 
rience. First, there was knowledge of the object ; sec- 
ond, of the environment ; and, third 1 , of the ground or 
logical condition, which rendered the object and its en- 
vironment possible. There was the thing in space ; 



126 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

second, its relation to an environment of tilings in 
space ; and third, there was space. There was likewise 
the event, and its environment of antecedent and sub- 
sequent events ; and then the underlying logical condi- 
tion of time." * 

" Philosophy, as a higher, special form of reflection, 
investigates the presuppositions or logical conditions of 
the objects and environments of our experience and 
makes the third stage of experience clear and distinct — 
far more clear and distinct than the first or second 
stages, because they relate to contingent and changeable 
objects, while the insight into the unchanging nature of 
time and space sees the necessary and universal condi- 
tions of the existence of all phenomena. The third ele- 
ment of experience, which furnishes these logical con- 
ditions is the basis of universal, necessary, and exhaustive 
cognitions. 

" The most rudimentary form of human experience, 
as it is to be found in the case of the child or the sav- 
age, contains these logical presuppostions, although not 
as a distinct object of attention. Even the lowest 
human consciousness contains all the elements which 
the philosopher, by special attention, develops and sys- 
temizes into a body of absolute truth. 

" Every act of experience contains within it not only 
a knowledge of what is limited and definite, but also a 
cognition of the total possible, or the exhaustive condi- 
tions implied or presupposed by the finite object. 
Hence those vast ideas which we name world, nature, 
universe, eternity, and the like, instead of being mere 

* Vol. 17, p. 300. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 127 

artificial ideas, or ( factitious ' ideas, as they have been 
called, are positive and adequate ideas in so far as they 
relate to the general structure of the whole. We know, 
or may know, the logical conditions of the existence of 
the world far better than we know its details. 

" All our genera] ideas, all our concepts, with which 
we group together the multitude of phenomena and 
cognize them, arise from this third stage of experience. 
It is the partial consciousness of the logical conditions 
of phenomena which enters as conditions of our expe- 
rience that enables us to rise out of the details of the 
world and grasp them together, and preserve them 
in bundles or unities, which we know as classes, species, 
genera, processes, and relations. These classes and 
processes we name by words. Language is impossible 
to an animal that can not analyze the complex of his 
experience so far as to become to some degree con- 
scious of the third element in his experience — the a 
priori element of logical conditions. 

" Another most important point to notice is that these 
a priori conditions of experience are both subjective and 
objective — both conditions of experience, and likewise 
conditions of the existence of phenomena. The due 
consideration of this astonishing fact leads us to see 
that, whatever be the things and processes of the world, 
we know that mind as revealed in its a priori nature is 
related to the world as the condition of its existence. 
All conscious beings in the possession of the conditions 
of experience— in being rational, in short — participate 
in the principle that gives existence to the world, and 
that principle is reason. Time and space condition the 
existence of the world; time and space we find a 



128 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

priori in the constitution of mind or reason. This sur- 
prising insight, which comes upon us as we consider 
time and and space, is confirmed by all our philosophi- 
cal studies. In our study of causality, we find confir- 
mation of this insight." * 

Causality and Self- Cause. — "Without using the 
idea of causality the mind can not recognize itself as the 
producer of its deeds, nor can it recognize anything 
objectively existing as the producer of its sense impres- 
sions. All sense-impressions are mere feelings and are 
subjective. How do we ever come to recognize objects 
as the causes of our sense-impressions? We can see 
that it is impossible for us to derive the idea of cause 
from experience, because we have to use that idea in 
order to begin experience. The perception of the ob- 
jective is possible only by the act of passing beyond our 
subjective sensations and referring them to external 
objects as causes of them. Whether I refer the cause 
of my sensations to objects and thereby perceive, or 
whether I trace the impressions to my own organism 
and detect an illusion of my senses in place of a real 
perception — in both cases I use the idea of causality. 
The object is a cause, or else I am the sole cause. 

" ' When we are aware of something that begins to 
be, we are, by the necessity of our intelligence, con- 
strained to believe that it has a cause,' says Sir William 
Hamilton. The idea of causality contains the idea of 
energy or self -activity (or self-determination), we should 
say, and it is not a mere impotence of the mind, but a 
positive idea that reveals to us, more than any other, 

* Vol. 17, pp. 301, 302. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 129 

the transcendence of mind. Hamilton (Metaph., pp. 
533, 555) refers causality to \ a negative impotence ' of 
the mind. * We can not conceive any new existence to 
commence ; therefore all that now is seen to arise under 
a new appearance had previously an existence under a 
prior form.' This is his analysis of causality : What 
exists now must have existed somehow T before. ' There 
is conceived an absolute tautology between the effect 
and its cause. . . . We necessarily deny in thought that 
the object which appears to begin to be really so begins, 
and we necessarily identify its present with its past ex- 
istence.' Here we see the defect of Hamilton's analy- 
sis. He eliminates the idea of cause altogether, and has 
left only one of its factors — that of continuity or con- 
tinuous existence. The element of difference or dis- 
tinction is omitted and ignored. (Hume reduced the 
idea of cause to that of invariable sequence.) 

" In our idea of causality we conceive something as 
producing something different from itself, or as origi- 
nating a distinction, a difference. Change involves the 
origination of something new, something that did not 
exist before. This is one of its elements. On the 
other hand, causality involves the identification of this 
new determination with what existed before. But this 
is not all. The difference and identity are united in a 
deeper idea — the idea of cause contains the unity of 
difference and identity in a deeper idea, the idea of en- 
ergy. Energy is deeper than existence because it is the 
originator of existence. We think the cause as an en- 
ergy that gives rise to changes. It gives rise to new 
distinctions and differences — something, through the 
action of a cause, becomes different from what it was 



130 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

before. The action of the energy is the essential ele- 
ment in the idea of cause, and Hamilton's analysis omits 
just this, and reduces the idea of an activity to a se- 
quence of existences. 

" Experience would be utterly impossible with such 
an idea as Hamilton's or Hume's in place of the causal 
idea. We should say, as Hamilton does say, in fact, ex 
nihilo nihil ; that is to say, there can be no origination, 
but only a persistence of being. 

" The idea of causality involves this : An existence 
which is an energy shall by its activity originate a dis- 
tinction within itself, and by the same activity transfer 
this distinction to something else, thus producing a 
change. 

" A cause sends a stream of influence to an effect. 
It must, therefore, separate this stream from itself. 
Self-separation is, therefore, the fundamental idea in 
causality. Unless the cause is a self-separating energy 
it can not be conceived as acting on something else. 
The action of causality is based on self-activity. 

" The attempt to form a mental image of causality 
is futile. We can imagine existences, but not the origi- 
nation of them. We can not imagine time and space 
as we conceive them. We can not imagine causality as 
we conceive and think it. 

" It is, in fact, the most repugnant idea to a mind 
that clings to mental pictures as the only form of think- 
ing. Such a mind fails to discriminate clearly between 
efficient cause and transmitting links or agents. By 
doing this it produces an infinite regress of causes 
which are at the same time effects. In this way it suc- 
ceeds in losing the idea of efficient cause altogether. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 131 

(This is done in the third antinomy of Kant's < Critique 
of Pure Reason.') For example: a change, A, is 
caused by B, another change ; B is caused by C, a third 
change ; C by D ; and D by E, and so on, ad infini- 
■tum. Here we have a change A, which, being an effect, 
must have a cause. We look first for the cause in B, 
but, upon examination, we see that B is only a trans- 
mitter of the cause — it is an instrument or agent 
through which the causal energy passes on its way from 
beyond. We successively trace it through C, D, E, etc. 
The imagination says, ' so on forever.' This, of course, 
means that a true cause is not to be found at all in the 
series. But if this is so, it follows, likewise, that there 
are no effects in the series, for there is no effect without 
a cause. Here we see that there is a fallacy in the idea 
of infinite progress (or regress) in causes. The infinite 
regress can not be in the cause, but in the effect. For 
A, B, C, D, E, etc., are all effects. But just as sure as 
we see that these are effects, so sure are we that there 
is an efficient cause to produce them. The infinite 
series of links or transmitting members of the series 
change by reason of the activity of a true cause. If 
any one denies this, he denies that the changes are 
effects. 

" To deny that a change is an effect does not escape 
the law of causality, but it asserts that the change is 
self-caused or spontaneous. But this is only to come 
to the same result that one finds if he asserts that the 
change is caused by something else. 

" A real cause is an originator of changes or new 
forms of existence. It is not something that demands 
another cause behind it, for it is self -active. The chain 



132 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of relativity ends in a true cause and can not be con- 
ceived without it. 

" The true cause is an absolute, inasmuch as it is 
independent. That which receives its form from 
another is dependent and relative. That which is self- 
active or a true cause, gives form to itself or to others, 
and is itself independent of others. That which can 
supply itself does not need others to supply it. 

" Our idea of cause, therefore, is the nucleus of our 
idea of an absolute. It is the basis of our idea of free- 
dom, of moral responsibility, of self-hood, of immor- 
tality, and, finally, of God. 

" All things that exist owe their qualities, marks, 
and attributes either to causes outside themselves or to 
their own causality. If the former — that is, if they are 
what they are through others — they are dependent 
beings, and can not be free or responsible or immortal. 
If the latter — if they are what they are through their 
own causality — they are free and morally responsible, 
immortal selves, and they are in the image of God, 
the Creator of all things, who has endowed them with 
causal energy, that is to say, with the power to build 
themselves, and he has not built them or furnished 
them ready-made. The causal existence may be perfect 
as God, or it may be partially realized and partially po- 
tential, as in the case of man. (' Partially potential ' — 
that is to say, man has not fully realized himself, al- 
though he has the power thus to realize himself.) 

" The idea of a whole or complete being is realized 
in our minds solely through the idea of cause. Any 
dependent being is relative to another and involved 
with it, so that it can not be detached from it and exist 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 133 

by itself. It is no center of formation and transforma- 
tion. 

" Our idea of life or living being also lias this cansal 
idea as its basis. 

" When one does not confound the idea of causality 
with the application of it to this or that case, but looks 
in the face of it, and sees the absolute certainty which 
he possesses that there can be no change without an 
efficient cause — and the like certainty that the true 
cause is an originator of movement and of new forms — 
when he sees that experience can not furnish the idea 
because it can not begin without it, and because the ex- 
ternal senses can never perceive a true cause at all — he 
will see how important this investigation is in psy- 
chology." * 

Space and Time. — "Previous to the formation of 
general ideas, sense-perception is merely the ceaseless 
flow of individual impressions without observed connec- 
tion with one another. In fact, we do not perceive at 
all, strictly speaking, until we bring general ideas to the 
aid of our sense-impressions. For we do not perceive 
things except by combining our different sense-impres- 
sions — that is to say, by uniting them by means of the 
ideas of time, space, and causality. 

" These three ideas are not derived from experience 
— in other words, they are not externally perceived as 
objects, or learned by contact with them as individual 
examples. "We know that this is so by considering their 
nature, and especially by noting that they are necessary 
as conditions for each and every act of experience. We 

* " Illinois School Journal," vol viii, pp. 57-60, October, 1888. 
13 



134: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

do not mean, of course, that we must be conscious of 
these ideas of time, space, and causality before any act 
of experience ; nor would we deny that we become con- 
scious of those ideas by analyzing experience — what we 
deny is that they were furnished by sense-impressions ; 
what we affirm is that they were furnished by the mind 
in its unconscious acts of appropriating the sense-impres- 
sions and converting them into perception. The mind's 
self-activity is the source of such ideas. 

" We find these ideas in experience, but as furnished 
by the self-activity of the mind itself, and not as derived 
from sense-impressions. We may each and all convince 
ourselves of the impossibility of deriving these ideas 
from sense-impressions by giving attention to the pecul- 
iar nature of these ideas. We shall see, in fact, that no 
act of experience can be completed without these ideas. 
Immanuel Kant called them 'forms of the mind' — 
they may be said to belong to the constitution of the 
mind itself because it uses these ideas in the first act of 
experience, and in all acts of experience. 

" Why could not these ideas be furnished by experi- 
ence like ideas of trees and animals, of earth and sky ? 
The answer is : Because the ideas of time and space in- 
volve infinitude, and the idea of causality involves abso- 
luteness ; and neither of these ideas could by any pos- 
sibility be received through the senses. And it is not 
correct to say that we derive even ideas of trees and 
animals, earth and sky, from sense-impressions, because 
sense-impressions can not become ideas until they are 
thought under the forms of time, space, and causality. 
Before this they are merely sensations ; after this they 
are ideas of possible or real objects existing in the world. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 135 

" Let the psychologist who believes that all ideas are 
derived from sense-impressions explain how we conld 
receive by such means the idea of what is infinite and 
absolute. Is not any sense-perception limited to what 
is here and now \ How can we perceive by the senses 
what is everywhere and eternal ? 

" The materialist will answer, perhaps : "We can not, 
it is true, perceive what is infinite and eternal by means 
of the senses ; nor can we conceive or think such ideas 
by any means whatever. In fact, we do not have such 
ideas. Time and space and causality do not imply con- 
ceptions of infinitude or absoluteness. All supposed 
conceptions of the infinite and absolute are merely 
negative ideas, which express our incapacity to conceive 
the infinite rather than our positive comprehension 
of it. 

" The issue being fairly presented we may test the 
matter for ourselves. Do we think space to be infinite, 
or simply as indefinite ? Do we not think space as hav- 
ing such a nature that it can only be limited by itself ? 
In other words, would not any limited space or spaces 
imply space beyond them and thus be continued rather 
than limited ? Let any one try this thought and see if 
he does not find it necessary to think space as infinite, 
for the very reason that all spatial limitation implies 
space beyond the limit. Space, as such, can not be 
limited — the limitation must belong always to that which 
is within space. An attempt to conceive space itself as 
limited results in thinking the limited space as within a 
larger space. Space is of such a nature that it can only 
be thought as self-continuous, for its very limitations 
continue it. A limited portion of space is bounded 



136 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

only by another space. The limited portion of space is 
continuous with its environment of space. 

" This is a positive idea, and not a negative one. The 
idea would be a negative idea if our thinking of it could 
not transcend the limit — that is to say, if we could not 
think space beyond the limit. But as our thought of 
space is not thus conditioned (we are, in fact, obliged to 
think a continuous space under all spatial limitations) 
space is a positive or affirmative idea. We see that the 
mind thinks a positive infinite space under any idea of 
a thing extended in space. 

" Let us state this in another way : We perceive or 
think things as having environments — each thing as 
being related to something else or to other things sur- 
rounding it. This is the thought of relativity. But 
we think both things and environments as contained 
in pure space — and pure space is not limited or finite, 
because all limitation implies space beyond. 

" The difficulty in this psychological question arises 
through a confusion of imagination with conception or 
thinking. While we conceive infinite space positively, 
and are unable to think space otherwise than infinite or 
self-continued — yet, on the other hand, we can not 
image, or envisage, or form a mental picture of infinite 
space. This inability to imagine infinite space has been 
supposed by Sir William Hamilton (see his ' Lectures on 
Metaphysics,' page 527 of the American edition) to 
contradict our thought of infinite space. His doctrine 
was adopted by Mansell and Lewes, and also by Herbert 
Spencer, who made it the foundation thought of his 
i unknowable ' (' First Principles,' Part I, chap. i). 

"Now, a little reflection (and introspection) will 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 137 

convince us that this incapacity of imagination to pict- 
ure infinite space is not a proof that we can not conceive 
or think that idea, but the contrary. Our incapacity to 
imagine infinite space is another proof of the infinitude 
of space ! 

" When we form a mental picture of space, why do 
we know that that picture does not represent all space ? 
Simply because we are conscious that our thought of the 
mental picture finds boundaries to that picture, and that 
these boundaries imply space beyond them ; hence the 
limited picture (and all images and pictures must be 
limited) includes a portion of space, but not all of space. 
Thus it is our thought of space as infinite, or self-con- 
tinued, that makes us conscious of the inadequacy of the 
mental picture. If we could form a mental picture of 
all space, then it would follow of necessity that the 
whole of space is finite. In that case imagination would 
contradict thinking or conceiving. As it is, however, 
imagination confirms conception. Thinking says that 
space is infinite because it is of such a nature that all 
limitations posit space beyond them, and thus only con- 
tinue space instead of bound it. Imagination tries to 
picture space as a limited whole, but finds it impossible 
because all its limitations fall within space, and do not 
include, space as a bounded whole. Thus both mental 
operations agree. The one is a negative confirmation 
of the other. Thinking reason sees positively that space 
is infinite, while imagination sees that it can not be 
imaged as finite. 

"Time is also infinite. Any beginning presupposes 
a time previous to it. Posit a beginning to time itself 
and we merely posit a time previous to time itself. 



138 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY* OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Time can be limited by time only. The now is limited 
by time past and by time future ; no, it is not correct 
to say that it is limited, for it is continued by them. 
Time did not begin ; nor will it end. 

" But one can not perceive an event without think- 
ing it under the idea of time. No sensation that man 
may have had could be construed as a change or event 
happening in the world except by the idea of time. 
But it is impossible to derive the idea of time, such as 
we have it from sense impressions, for any one, or any 
series of such impressions could not furnish an infinite 
time nor the idea of a necessary condition. 

" Nor could the experience of any limited extension 
give us the idea of infinite space or of the necessity of 
space as a condition of that experience." * 

Causality conditions Space and lime. — "The 
principle of causality is so deep a logical condition of 
experience that it conditions even space and time them- 
selves. For the externality of the parts of space or the 
moments of time are conditioned upon mutual exclusion. 
Each now excludes all other nows, and is excluded by 
them. Each part of space excludes all other parts of 
space, and is excluded by them. Any portion of space 
is composed of parts of space, and it is the mutual exclu- 
sion of these parts that produces and measures the in- 
cluding whole. Suppose, for instance, that one of the 
parts of space allowed another part to become identical 
with it, penetrate it, and did not exclude it ; then, at 
once, the portion of space to which these two parts 
belonged would shrink by just that amount of space, 

* " Illinois School Journal," vol. viii, pp. 7-11. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 139 

which had admitted the other. The portion of space 
and all portions of space, are what they are through 
this exclusion, aud this exclusion is a pure form of causal- 
ity, or an utterance of influence upon an environment. 
Time itself is another example of the same exclusion. 
The present excludes the past, and is excluded by it. 
Both present and past exclude the future, and are ex- 
cluded by it. Suppose one of these to include the other, 
then time is destroyed ; but, as time is the condition of 
all manifestation and expression, the thought of such 
mutual inclusion of moments of time is impossible. 
The same implication of causality is found in time as in 
space." * 

" The true infinite is freedom. An infinite is de- 
fined as that which is its own other or environment. 
But if this separation of self from environment is static 
or passive, the unity is imperfect, and must be supple- 
mented by another. Space is supplemented by time, 
because its unity is imperfect, a unity in kind, or spe- 
cies, of all parts of space, but not a unity of energy in 
which each part is the whole. 

" In freedom the self is its own other or environ- 
ment, infinitely continued or affirmed by itself. Its 
other, too, is activity or energy, and is free, and hence 
infinite. Therefore it exists for itself. But a part of 
space, although continued by its environment, exists 
not for itself, but for the unity of all space, which alone 
is infinite. Space is infinite, but it does not consist of 
parts that are also self-existent and infinite. Hence the 
unity of all space is not perfect, as before stated." f 

* Vol. 17, pp. 303, 304. f ™- *?, P- 341. 



140 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

" The skepticism in vogue, called ' agnosticism,' rests 
on the denial of the capacity of the mind to conceive 
the infinite ; and, strange to say, this very example of 
the infinite, which we find in space and time, is brought 
forward to support the doctrine. . 'I can conceive 
only finite spaces and times, but not space or time as a 
whole, because as wholes they contain all finite spaces 
and times.' But agnosticism bases its very doctrine on 
a true knowledge of the infinity of time and space. 
For, unless it knew that the environing space was ne- 
cessarily a repetition of the same space over and over 
again forever, how could it affirm the impossibility of 
completing it by successive additions of the environ- 
ment to the limited space. It says, in effect : ' We can 
not know space, because (we know that) its nature im- 
plies infinite extent, and can not be reached by succes- 
sive syntheses.' " * 

" The attitude of modern science against philosophy 
— the attitude of positivism against metaphysics — the 
attitude of mysticism and * theosophy ' against Christian- 
ity — in short, all agnosticism and pantheism branches 
out at the point treated in this chapter (' Space and 
Time'). Most of it starts professedly from Sir William 
Hamilton's supposed proof that the idea of the infinite 
is merely a negative idea — an incapacity instead of a 
real insight. From the psychological doctrine of the 
negativity of our ideas of the infinite and absolute (first 
applied by Hamilton in his famous critique of Cousin) 
it is easy to establish the world- view of pantheism, and 
to deny the doctrine of the personality of God." f 

* Vol. 17, p. 300. f " Illinois School Journal," vol. viii, p. 11. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIYE INDIVIDUAL. 141 

Quality and Quantity.—" The general form under 
which we behold objects in sense-perception is that of 
thing and environment. This is called the category of 
quality. To the question that asks what kind, or after 
the qualities, we answer by describing the difference of 
the thing from its environment. We mention its bound- 
aries, its contrasts, and its reciprocal relations. In the 
category of quality there is (a) affirmation (of the thing), 
(b) negation (of the environment), and (<?) limitation (of 
the thing by the environment). We have already seen 
by this category of quality, or by external percep- 
tion, which invariably uses this category in all its 
knowing, that it is impossible ever to perceive self- 
activity. All this, we thus perceive has the form 
of external limitation and dependence ; and limita- 
tion and dependence make an object finite. In con- 
trast to this is the category of internal perception, 
which beholds some example or specimen of self-activ- 
ity — a feeling, an idea, or a volition. We have called 
the objects of external perception phenomena, and the 
objects of internal perception noumena. A phenome- 
non depends on another being for its origin and pres- 
sent existence, but a noumenon is sufficient for itself ; 
it is an original cause, a source of energy, an essence 
that manifests its own nature in what it produces. It 
is a self -activity. Introspection perceives self- activity 
as feeling, willing, and thinking. 

" There is a realm lying between these two existences 
— the realm of the quantitative. Quantity is a very 
important category, because it lies midway between the 
form of the external perception and the internal per- 
ception, and participates in both. The idea of quantity 



142 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. ' 

is one of the chief problems in psychology. It is an 
instrument by which man becomes lord of Nature. 
Man divides and conquers. He moves mountains and 
fills np valleys by first estimating the number of cubic 
yards (or tip-cart loads) it is necessary to transport, and 
marshals against this quantity of earth the quantity of 
hands and machines necessary to produce the result in 
the quantum of time required. All science of Nature 
is, in the first place, an effort to get behind the quali- 
tative aspects of external things to the quantitative con- 
ditions. To obtain exact knowledge of a phenomenon, 
yon must fix the order of succession, the date, the dura- 
tion, the locality, the environment, the extent of the 
sphere of inflnence, its degree of intensity, the number 
of manifestations, and the number of cases of intermit- 
tence. It is easy to perceive what is already known, 
and to note new differences, and by this add an incre- 
ment to the sum of knowledge. By quantification, 
science grows continually without retrograde move- 
ments. 

" We all have experience, bnt few attain to scientific 
method. Every day of our lives marshals its train of 
facts before us in endless succession. But without sci- 
entific method each fact does much to obliterate all 
others by its presence. Like the fabled Saturn, such 
experience devours its own offspring. Out of sight, 
they are out of mind. In science, the present fact is 
deprived of its ostentatious and all-absorbing interest by 
the act of relating it to all other facts. To study the 
nature of quantity can not fail to give ns some insight 
into a great part of intellectual education. Mathematics 
deals directly with the separation of the quantitative 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 143 

elements from the qualitative and the fixing their uni- 
versal value by comparison with a given unit. The 
science of inorganic nature and of molecular physics — 
including chemistry, heat, light, and electricity — are 
little else but the application of mathematics. The sci- 
ences of organic nature use mathematics in order to fix 
exact results. 

" Quantity is opposed to quality and to self -activity, 
but it presupposes and participates in both. In quality, 
each thing is limited by an environment different in 
kind from itself. In quantity, the environment of each 
unit of number, extension, or degree, has an environ- 
ment of the same kind. Its other is like itself ; whereas 
in quality everything is regarded as different from the 
others. The thought of quantity is a double. It first 
thinks quality, and then negates it or takes it away. In 
other words, it abstracts from quality. It first thinks 
quality, or thing and environment, and then thinks both 
as the same in kind, or as repetitions of the same. A 
thing becomes a unit when it is repeated so that it is 
within an environment of duplicates of itself. In quan- 
tity we have repetitions of the same unit, and then again 
the sum or the whole is a unit because all is homogeneous. 
Quantity is, in fact, the ratio of these two units, the 
constituent units, and the whole, or sum, which they 
make. The difficulties in mathematics increase just in 
proportion to the explicitness of this ratio — that is to 
say, the higher mathematics deal more with the ratio 
and less with the terms of the ratio ; while elementary 
mathematics deals more with the terms of the ratio. 
The ratio between the unity of the sum and the ele- 
mental unit is not explicit in elemental arithmetic, but 



144 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

it is made explicit in common fractions by expressing 
the quantity by means of two numbers. The child finds 
it requires a double act of the mind to think quantity 
at all, for he has to start with quality and to abstract 
from it. But he has to double this mental act again to 
think a fraction. Decimal fractions involve one step of 
difficulty higher than common fractions. They have 
the same elements of ratio with the added difficulty that 
the denomination, instead of being expressed by a simple 
number, is itself a ratio, and must be calculated men- 
tally by the pupil from the number of decimal places 
occupied in expressing the numerator. Arithmetic 
rises into difficulties through making the ratio of the 
two orders of units involved in all quantity, its object. 
Algebra drops out the definite expression of the two 
orders of units between which the ratio exists, and deals 
with ratios altogether. The complexity of such mathe- 
matical thought is obvious. The expression of this 
ratio becomes still more explicit, and finally explicit in 
fluxions and the differential calculus." * 

" Consider the nature of quality, and you will see an 
idea that could not be an object of experience at all. 
Under the idea of the finite lies the idea of the infinite, 
not as a negative idea, an unlimited or unconditioned, 
but as a self-limited or self-conditioned. For, if each 
object depends upon another, and is conditioned by it, 
it makes up a part of one totality where the condition- 
ing is mutual and the process of one being. Hence, 
self- conditioning is the form of the whole — the form of 
that which is its own other — the infinite. All true 

* " Journal of Education," vol. xxix, p. 25, Jan. 10, 1889. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 145 

being is self-conditioned. Only as seen in fragments 
by experience are qualitative or dependent beings seen. 

" There is in the nature of the objects of experience 
a presupposition of quantity. There is externality, and 
hence extension. There is repetition of the same, and 
hence number and succession. All mathematics furnish 
to us a priori knowledge of the quantitative constitu- 
tion of objects as forming a world of experience. If 
objects are to exist, or if they are to move, they must 
exist and move according to quantitative laws, as defined 
in mathematics. A triangle will always have the sum 
of its three angles equal to two right angles. If acted 
upon by a constant force, an object will move with 
accelerated velocity, into whose measure enters the 
square of the time interval as a factor. Our knowledge 
of quantity is a knowledge of what is universal and 
necessary, and hence it is not derived from experience. 
Causality is, in fact, presupposed by quality and quan- 
tity. It makes possible the inter-relation of things, and 
the existence of repetition, which lies at the basis of 
quantity, as extensive or intensive. It explains all influ- 
ence of one object upon another. Without the idea of 
causality we should see differences, but no movements 
or changes. We should see only contradiction — a thing 
first in one state and then in another ; the blossom and 
then the apple, without the idea of change and action 
to explain how one object may be both A and B." * 

Change and Self- Activity. ,— " What is the great cen- 
tral fact to be kept in view in the study of the mind ? 
To this question there is only one answer : It is self- 

* " Results in Ontology," Concord Lectures, July, 1887. 
14 



146 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

activity. But the answer is likely to be a Sphinx rid- 
dle to the beginner. "Who has not heard it often re- 
peated that the end and aim of education is to arouse 
self -activity in the pupil? And yet who means any- 
thing by that word % The moment that one calls atten- 
tion to its true implications, he is met by the objection : 
It is impossible to conceive the origination of activity ; 
it is impossible to frame a concept of what is both sub- 
ject and object at the same time ; self-activity and self- 
consciousness are inconceivable. k The words exist, it is 
true, but the mind is unable to realize in thought what 
is signified by them.' Herbert Spencer (' First Prin- 
ciples,' page 65 of first edition), says of self- conscious- 
ness : ' Clearly a true cognition of self implies a state 
in which the knowing and known are one, in which the 
subject and object are identified ; and this Mr. Mansell 
rightly holds to be the annihilation of both.' 

" Just the difficulty found in the conception of self- 
consciousness is found in that of self-activity. We can 
not form a mental picture of self-activity, nor of self- 
consciousness. We can not picture an activity in which 
the origin is also the point of return. But this does not 
surprise us so much when we learn that we can not 
form a mental picture of any activity of any kind what- 
ever. We can not picture even a movement in space 
although we may picture the two places between which 
the motion occurs. So, too, becoming and change can 
not be pictured in the mind, although we may picture 
the states of being before and after the transition. We 
may picture an object as here or there, but not as 
moving. The ancient skeptics expressed this fact by 
denying motion altogether. ' A thing,' said they, ' can 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 147 

not move where it is, because it is there already, and of 
course it can not move where it is not ; hence it can not 
move at all.' 

" The unwary listener who supposes that he is think- 
ing the elements of the problem when he merely exer- 
cises his imagination, finds himself drawn into a logi- 
cal conclusion that contradicts all his experience. To 
deny motion, in fact, makes experience impossible. 
Take all motion out of the world and there could be no 
experience ; for experience involves motion in the sub- 
ject that perceives, or in the object perceived, or in 
both. And yet we can not form a mental picture of 
motion or change. We picture different states or con- 
ditions of an object that is undergoing change and 
different positions occupied by a moving thing. But 
the element of change and motion we do not picture. 

" Hence it is not surprising that we can not form 
for ourselves a mental picture of self-activity, since we 
are unable to picture in our minds any sort of activity, 
movement, or change. And yet the thought of motion, 
change, and activity, is necessary to explain the world 
of experience — nay, even to perceive or observe it. 
So, too, the thought of self-activity is necessary in order 
to explain motion, change, and activity. 

" To make this clear, consider the following : (a) 
That which moves, moves either because it is impelled 
to move by another, or because it impels itself to move. 
(b) In the latter case, that of self-impulsion, we have 
self -activity at once, (c) In the former case, that of 
impulsion through another, we have self -activity im- 
plied as origin of the motion. Either the other which 
moves it is directly self-active, or else it receives and 



148 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

transmits the energy causing motion (without originat- 
ing it)* (d) Were there no originating source of move- 
ment it is obvious that there could be no motion to 
transmit. Suppose, for once, that all things received 
and transmitted and yet none originated energy. Then 
all phenomena of movement would be derived, but from 
no source ; all would be effects, but effected by no cause. 
The chain of transmitting links may be infinite in ex- 
tent, but it is only an infinite effect without a cause. 
Here we contradict ourselves. If there is no self -active 
cause from which the energy proceeds, and from which 
it is received by the infinite transmitting series, then 
that series does not derive its energy, but originates it 
and is self-active. 

" Hence, self-activity must be either within the se- 
ries or outside it, and in any case self-activity is the es- 
sential idea presupposed as the logical condition of any 
thought of motion whatever. . . . 

" What phenomena are attributed to self -activity ? 
In the first place we recognize it in plants. All human 
observation, whether of civilized or of savage peoples, 
takes note of self-activity in the phenomena of vegeta- 
tion. 

" The plant grows, puts out new buds, leaves, 
branches, blossoms, fruit ; adds layers to its thickness, 
extends its roots. It does this by its own activity, and 
its growth is not the effect of some outside being, al- 
though outside conditions must be favorable or else the 
energy of the plant is not able to overcome the ob- 
stacles. 

" The plant must grow by adding to itself matter 
that it takes up from its environment — water, salts, 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 149 

carbon, etc. Notice that the plant-energy attacks its 
surroundings of air, moisture, and earth, and appropri- 
ates to itself its environment, after transforming it. 
One may admit that the environment acts on the plant, 
but he must contend for the essential fact that the plant 
reacts on its environment, originating motion itself, 
and meeting and modifying external influences. The 
plant builds its structure according to an ideal model, 
not a conscious model, of course. Its shape and size, 
its roots and branches, its leaves and flowers, and fruit 
resemble the ideal (model or type) of its kind or spe- 
cies, and not the ideal of some other species. The self- 
activity of the plant is manifested in action upon its en- 
vironment, which results in building up its own indi- 
viduality. It not only acts, but acts for itself ; it is 
self- related. 

" Again, notice that the plant acts destructively on 
other things, and strips off the individuality that trans- 
forms their substance into its own tissue, making it into 
vegetable cells. 

" The self-activity of the plant is then a formative 
power that can conquer other forms and impose its own 
form upon them. 

" In the next place, consider the kind of energy 
that we call the self-activity in animals. The individual 
animal is also a formative energy, destroying other 
forms, eating up plants, for example, and consuming 
the oxygen of the air, and making over the matter into 
animal cells. 

" But the animal shows self-activity in other ways. 
It not only appropriates and assimilates, but it moves 
its limbs and feels. In the plant there is movement of 



150 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

circulation and growth, and this is also found in the 
animal. But locomotion is a new feature of self-ac- 
tivity. It enables the animal to change his environ- 
ment. The animal can use some part of itself as an 
instrument for providing food, or as a lever bj which 
to move its whole body. 

"Self-activity is manifested in locomotion, and es- 
pecially in its conformity to design or purpose. The 
animal moves in order to realize a purpose. With pur- 
pose or design we have reached internality. 

"Purpose or design implies a distinction between 
what is and what is not. The lowest and blindest feel- 
ing that exists deals with this discrimination. Pleasure 
and pain, comfort and discomfort, appetite and aversion, 
all imply discrimination between one's organism and 
the environment, as well as between the organism as it 
is and the organism as it should be. There is in all 
feeling a discrimination of limit, and a passing beyond 
limit. This transcending of the limit to the organism 
by the self-activity constitutes sensibility. 

" Feeling is an activity ; it is a self-activity ; it is like 
assimilation or digestion, a reaction against an environ- 
ment. The environment negates or limits the organ- 
ism ; feeling perceives the limitation, or discriminates 
itself as organism from its not-self as environment. 
Feeling, therefore, transcends its organism, and unites 
two factors — organic self and environment. The self 
moves in order to relieve itself of the pain or discom- 
fort attending this negative action of the environment. 
Hunger and cold, all varieties of appetite and desire, 
have this elemental discrimination between organism 
and environment, and a further discrimination between 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 151 

the being of the self and the non-being of the self, so 
that something not yet existent (some ideal state) is 
discriminated. This discrimination of the ideal is the 
essential element in desire and sensation, as well as 
in all higher forms of self -activity, say of thought and 
will. 

" It is important to recognize the existence of dis- 
crimination in this lowest stage of blind feeling — the 
most rudimentary animal soul. Feeling, in the act of 
discriminating between the existing self and its possible 
self, is constructive ideally, for it repeats to itself its 
limitation. The limit to its organism exists, and it is in 
interaction with its environment. But the self-activity 
in this higher phase of feeling (higher than the vegeta- 
tive function of digestion) constructs ideally the limit 
of the organism and changes the limit for other possi- 
ble limits, comparing it therewith. This comparison of 
one limit with, other possible ones is the element of dis- 
crimination in feeling. 

" Sensation is an ideal reproduction of the actual 
limit to the organism. It involves also the simultaneous 
production of other possible limitations, and hence con- 
tains a reference to itself, a feeling of self in its total 
capacity. On a background, so to speak, of the general 
possibility of feeling is marked off this particular limit 
which reproduces or respresents the existent. The con- 
trast between it and the general potentiality of feeling 
is the birth of purpose or design, and (glancing upward) 
of all the ideals that arise in the human soul, moral, aes- 
thetic, and religious. 

" Self -activity as assimilation or digestion (vegetative 
soul), as feeling and locomotion (animal soul), and as 



152 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

thinking (human soul), is to be studied as the funda- 
mental unity of psychology and physiology. 

" It is not in itself an object of external observation, 
although external observation offers us phenomena that 
we explain by assuming self-activity as the individ- 
uality which causes them. Self-activity itself we per- 
ceive in ourselves by introspection. When we look 
within we become aware of free energy which acts as 
subject and object under the forms of feeling, thought, 
and volition. Becoming acquainted with the character- 
istics of these activities within ourselves, we learn to rec- 
ognize their manifestations in the external world." * 

" Looking at the world, then, with the reason, we see 
mechanical beings — helpless and unconscious — impelled 
from without ; aggregated and disintegrated by exter- 
nal forces ; the lowest form of being in the world, be- 
ing that can not determine its own form, but takes it as 
an impress from some other being. From mechanical 
being, reason looks up along the line of progress and 
sees beings that possess some power of determining 
their own form ; at the summit of the world it sees man 
gifted with the power of perfect self-determination. I 
say the power of perfect self-determination, and not the 
full realization of perfect self-determination. For 
man has the power to transform any thing, fact or event, 
or any idea of his mind, and hence is responsible for 
them all. If it is already perfect, he can make it imper- 
fect ; if imperfect he can make it perfect ; or he can by 
his self-activity approximate perfection or imperfec- 
tion. 

* " Illinois School Journal," vol. vii, pp. 395-399. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 153 

" Reason sees that the essence or essential being of 
the world must be not a thing or a being devoid of 
activity, but self-activity. It recognizes in a man a 
being in whom is realized this self-activity as an energy 
or power, but not as a completely self-realized being. 

" Thus there are possible two forms of self-activity : 
first, self-activity as the poive?* to realize itself; second, 
the self -activity that has completely accomplished this 
self-realization. 

" Now the insight of reason sees the necessity of self- 
activity as presupposed by all existence and change in 
the world. But what self -activity ? the first or second 
form of self-activity — the complete self-realization or 
the power to realize itself ? Certainly the former, the 
completed self-realization, is presupposed by a world of 
incomplete beings involved in a process of realization. 
Certainly a being must realize itself before it can realize 
others. A world reason, therefore, that furnishes the 
self-activity necessary to a universe of dependent and 
derivative beings must be a completed self-realization. 
Only a finite time can separate a being from the per- 
fection toward which it is growing or developing, and 
for which it possesses capacity. But time does not and 
can not condition the growth of the universe. It must 
be as complete at one time as at another. The absolute 
is unconditional as to time. Time past is greater than 
any given time, and hence more than sufficient for any 
possible development that was in progress. As a whole 
the universe is complete or perfect, and always has been. 
Any development or progress that we see now — any 
self- activities that we may now trace out in a stage of 
becoming or development, prove therefore that there is 



154: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

perennial renewal or new creation of beings that possess 
the capacity of growth." * 

" Self -activity has been distingnished into determin- 
ing and determined, or active and passive, subject and 
object of activity. We identified the subject as univer- 
sal, the antithesis between subject and object as the par- 
ticular or special, and the total as individual. These 
were seen as the primordial forms of the categories of 
reason — the universal, the particular, and the individual. 

"(1.) The self-determined as self is pure active. 
The self-active is vital and living and thinking, and 
essentially self-knowing. 

" (2.) It is not adequately expressed as self- active or 
self-knowing, because this involves an activity that 
makes itself passive, and a knowing that knows itself 
not as subject, but as object. 

" (3.) To act simply to produce passivity within 
itself, is the act of self-annihilation, or of self-contra- 
diction. To know one's self as object, and not as sub- 
ject, is also not to know one's self truly, but to know 
what one's self is not. We see, therefore, that the ex- 
plication of self-activity, or self-knowledge, or pure, 
absolute self-consciousness, demands that the self active 
shall determine itself as self-active, or that the self-con- 
scious shall know itself as self-conscious, and that the 
free shall know itself as a free being. 

"(4.) It follows, therefore, that independence of 
persons arises in the primordial self-active one. In 
order to be self-active and self -knowing, it is creative, 
and creates another which is the same as itself. In our 

* " Journal of the American Akademe," vol. v, pp. 261, 262. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 155 

finite knowing, our thoughts and fancies exists for us, 
but only subjectively. In the absolute, their existence 
as thoughts is absolute existence, Hence, knowing and 
willing are one in God. This, indeed, is the ground of 
explanation used again and again in Christian theology 
in treating the Trinity. 

"(5.) A first absolute, self -activity begets a second 
independent, free, perfect self-activity. The second, 
too, is creative — his will and knowing are one. In 
knowing himself, he creates a third equal in all respects 
to himself. 

" But the Second is begotten, while the First Person 
is unbegotten. In knowing himself, therefore, the Sec- 
ond Person makes an object of himself, not only as he is, 
but he makes an object also of his relation to the First, 
which is that of being begotten, or derived from the 
First. In the idea of derivation and begetting there is 
the idea of passivity. If the Second were only derived 
and begotten, he were only passive. But he has made 
himself self -active from all eternity. The passivity 
which is implied in derivation has been eternally 
annulled, but it is nevertheless an element in the self- 
knowledge of the Son, and as an object known, comes 
to exist as created, because his knowing is creating. 

" In thinking his relation to the First Person, he 
therefore creates a world of finite beings, extending 
from the most passive up to the most active. It is a 
world in which all is process or evolution — no finite 
existing absolutely, but only relatively to the develop- 
ment of a higher being. All below man pass away and 
do not retain individuality. Man is self-determining as 
individual, and hence includes his own development 



156 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

within himself as individual, and hence is immortal and 
free. 

" (6.) It is the thought of a becoming from passivity 
to perfect activity that is involved in the recognition of 
the derivation of the Second from the First Person, and 
this thought is the basis of the creation of the world. All 
stages of finitude are passed through on the way to the 
creation of man. The thought of what is merely object 
— the thought of the mere passivity — is the thought of 
simple externality or space. Space is the thought of 
one point outside of every other — no participation— 
— simple exclusion — mere objects outside the subject. 
Space is the first thought of the creation, the lowest 
thought in the self-knowing of the divine Second Per- 
son. (The mechanical, chemical, and organic phases of 
nature we shall discuss in another place ) " (See next 
topic.) 

" (7.) The Second Person knows himself as eternally 
elevated above all finitude and passivity, although his 
derivation implies passivity as a logically prior condi- 
tion. And as he knows his perfection as having this 
logical prior condition, he knows his perfect self as ex- 
isting as the consummation and summit of creation. 
Theology calls this a procession, or a double procession. 
If the Second Person could not know the evolution or 
process out of the passive into the active — out of the 
finite and imperfect into the infinite and perfect— -then 
he could not know his derivation from the First Person. 
Then, too, there could be no such elevation of the world, 
no salvation of any of its creatures." * 

* Vol. 17, pp. 313-315. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 157 

Life, Individuality, Absolute Personality. — "We 
will now consider the orders of being in nature in the 
light of the idea of creation already developed. Science 
in our time interprets the phases of nature in the light 
of the principle of evolution. In the ' struggle for ex- 
istence' one order develops into another. When we 
have seen how a species has arisen from a lower one, 
and how a higher has ascended from it in this struggle, 
we have explained it in the spirit of science in our day. 
Let us notice that this ' struggle for existence' is a 
manifestation of self-determination. The adoption of 
this point of view marks the arrival at an epoch in which 
the orders of being will be seen as a progressive revela- 
tion of the divine.* 

" How does this idea of evolution agree with the 
idea of creation as we have found it in considering what 
follows from self-activity as the first principle ? The 
self-active is self-determining and self-knowing, sub- 
ject and object. But as object it is also self-know- 
ing and self-determining. In this we can find as yet 
no necessity for creation of finite beings. The All- 
perfect knows himself as all-perfect, and his knowing 
is creating, because will and knowing are one in the 
Absolute, and knowing himself he creates what is self- 
knowing, self-willing, and hence pure self-activity like 
himself a creator. But the second self-activity, in 

* " ' A subtle chain of countless rings, 
The next unto the farthest brings ; 



And striving to be man, the worm 
Mounts through all the spires of form.' 
" This is Emerson's statement of the doctrine in 183G." 
15 



158 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

knowing itself, knows its relation to the first — a relation 
of derivation, and, in knowing it, creates it. It is in 
this contemplation by the second of his derivation from 
the first that we find the ground of creation of a world 
of finite beings. The second knows himself as pure 
self -activity, but as having made himself such from a 
state of mere passivity implied in derivation. The state 
of passivity has been transcended, must have been 
transcended ever since the first came to self-knowledge. 
But as absolute self-knowledge is necessary in the first 
principle, the same has been attained by the second 
from all eternity. 

" Hence the passivity involved in a derivation from 
the first is only a logical presupposition, and not chrono- 
logical. It being necessary that this logically prior state 
of passivity should be known by the second person in 
recognizing his derivation from the first, it follows that 
he creates a third, not simply like himself, but as eter- 
nally proceeding from the depths of passivity. 

" The perfect, which is a procession, is eternally per- 
fect, but the passive is an ascending series of orders of 
being in a state of becoming — an evolution from passiv- 
ity to self-activity. The becoming or evolution has 
necessarily the form of time, because there are change 
and decay. It has the form of space, because passivity 
involves externality or exclusion; for it (passivity) 
arises only in what is self-active, but is its opposite, 
and hence excludes it. But as this evolution is as 
eternal as the self-knowledge of the second person, the 
world in time and space is eternal, although of necessity 
its individuals exist only in a state of transition and loss 
of individuality. Suns and planets have their youth 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 159 

and old age just as animals and plants. But just as sure 
as there is a realm of perishable individuals, the end of 
whose existence is evolution, just so sure there must be 
a realm of immortal individuals ascending out of the 
lower realm of evolution and belonging to a realm 
wherein self- evolution or education prevails.* 

" Vanishing beings, such as belong to the realm of 
evolution, form together what may be called an ' appear- 
ance,' or manifestation of a process. The theory of 
evolution interprets the history of the individuals by 
the law of the process which is that of the struggle for 
existence or the struggle for freedom and self-determina- 
tion. This struggle is the school of development of 
individuality. There is no individuality where there is 
no self -activity. Individuality rises higher in the scale 
as it approaches the form of knowledge and will. A 
compendious survey shows us three orders of being: 
(a) inorganic nature, (h) life realized in plant and ani- 
mal, (c) self-conscious intelligence realized in man. 
There are three principles in the first of these realms, 
progressively realized. The first is mechanism, or ex- 
ternality which is void of an internal bond of unity — 
space and time, mere materiality, mere exclusion and 
impenetrability in so far as they appear in nature, char- 
acterize this realm of mechanism. 

"In so far as there appears dependence of one being 
on another we have a principle which attains its typical 
form in chemical unity. Each manifests another. Grav- 
itation, even, is such a manifestation. One body at- 

* " Says Emerson : ' It is a sufficient account of that appearance 
we call the world that God will teach a human mind.' " 



160 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tracted toward another attracts that other body in turn. 
Hence it gains weight and gives weight in turn. But 
in the chemical aspect of being each being shows some 
special relation to complementary beings with which it 
enters into combination in order to realize an ideal unity. 
An acid or a base, for example, has an ideal unity in a 
salt, and its combination with its opposite realizes this 
ideal unity. In so far as one being makes another the 
means by which it realizes itself there is a manifesta- 
tion of teleology. 

" Teleology is the third phase of the inorganic, and 
points toward life as its presupposition. Life is that in 
which every part is alike the means and the end for all 
the other parts — such is Kant's definition. Life mani- 
fests the phases of universal, particular, and individual 
in a process in which there are species and individual, 
and self-determination is manifested. In the plant the 
species only manifests self-determination, each step being 
the evolution of a new individual out of the old one. 
But in animal life there come feeling and locomotion. 
On the scale of feeling there develops sense-perception 
as well as representation in its two phases of recollection 
and fancy. 

" When the animal progresses beyond recollection 
and fancy to generalization, he becomes immortal as an 
individual. 

"Evolution prevails in nature, but it is not evolu- 
tion of the lower to the higher through the unaided 
might of the lower. There is no such unaided might 
of the lower. The lower order of being exists only 
in the process of evolution into the higher. It ex- 
ists only in transitu, and its individuality is fleeting. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 161 

The Divine Thought of eternal derivation and eternal 
annulment of derivation creates a world of finite beings 
existing not absolutely, but only in a process of evolu- 
tion. Hence each thing has phenomenal existence, and 
not absolute existence ; it is relative and dependent, and 
manifests its dependence by change. 

" If one conceives evolution even as growth of a liv- 
ing being, or, still higher, as the process of education of 
a conscious being, still the development does not take 
place unaided. Only the perfect or completely devel- 
oped can exist in perfect independence. All growing 
individuals and all finite things exist because created 
and sustained by a Perfect Being. The question that 
has seemed insoluble is, How can a Perfect Being create 
an imperfect one, and for what purpose would he create 
and sustain such a being ? It is answered by showing 
that the Second Divine Principle recognizes his relation 
to the First as a begotten, a derivation which, in so far 
as it involves passivity, He has eternally annulled, so 
that he is equal to the First by his own might of self- 
activity. 

" Creation is a free act, though necessary. It is not 
compelled by any external necessity. It is only a log- 
ical necessity, and not an external necessity. It is a 
logical necessity that the first principle should be self- 
active or self -determining, and hence free intelligence. 
But such logical necessity does not imply or involve fate 
or external constraint. This is a dialectic circle : (1) 
The First is necessarily free, (2) but is therefore necessi- 
tated and is not free ; (3) hence, not being free, it is not 
necessitated to be free, (4) and hence is free in spite of 
(2). Logical necessity is spoken of in (1) ; fatalistic 



162 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

necessity in (2) and (3) ; (2) and (3) cancel each other 
and leave (1) or (4)." * 

u We have seen the grounds for our conclusion that 
time and space are not externally perceived as objects 
or learned by contact with them as individual exam- 
ples — in short, we have seen that the ideas of time and 
space are not derived from sense-perception. From the 
nature of the case, sense-perception is limited to what 
is present (here and now), and can not furnish us objects 
that are infinite, like time and space. 

'• We have considered the idea of the infinite and 
noted the fact that it is a positive idea and not a nega- 
tive idea. This is very important, and must be borne 
in mind constantly in the psychology of education, or 
else we can not rightly adjudge the value or worthless- 
ness of ideas that lie at the bottom of so much that is 
offered us in literature, science, history, and philosophy 
in our day. 

" Time and space are the conditions of existence of 
all things and events in the world. The ideas of time 
and space make experience possible. 

" In thinking these ideas, we think the infinite in an 
affirmative manner. Through the mistake of Hamilton 
and Mansell, George Henry Lewes, and especially Her- 
bert Spencer, have been led into agnosticism, and most 
of the men of science and literature have followed them. 
If their doctrine of the inconceivability of the infinite 
is based on false psychology, we may see at once how 
much literature needs correction. Herbert Spencer, in 
his 'First Principles,' denies the conceivability of all 

* Vol. 17, pp. 347-351. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 163 

c ultimate religious ideas ' — such, for example, as self- 
existence, self-creation, and creation by an external 
agency. Nor can we conceive (according to him) of 
First Cause as infinite and absolute. He quotes Man- 
sell : ' The Absolute can not be conceived as conscious, 
neither can it be conceived as unconscious ; it can not 
be conceived as complex, neither can it be conceived as 
simple ; it can not be conceived by difference, neither 
can it be conceived by the absence of difference ; it can 
not be identified with the universe, neither can it be 
distinguished from it.' ' The fundamental conceptions 
of rational theology,' according to Mansell and Spencer, 
' are thus self-destructive.' 

" All these negative conclusions are based on the 
false psychology exposed in the previous chapters. Spen- 
cer says (page 31, first edition of ' First Principles ') : 
< Self existence, therefore, necessarily means existence 
without a beginning ; and to form a conception of self- 
existence is to form a conception of existence without a 
beginning. Now, by no mental effort can we do this. 
To conceive existence through infinite past time implies 
the conception of infinite past time, which is an impos- 
sibility.' 

" To us this all rests on the confusion of mental im- 
ages with logical thought. We can not image infinite 
time simply because it is infinite. That it is infinite we 
can know, however, by thinking on its nature. We can 
see that any limited time is limited by time previous 
and subsequent, and that these three times — present, 
past, and future — all are parts of the same time. 

" In fact, had Spencer been acquainted with Kant's 
Kritik he would have noticed his own contradiction. 



164 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

For while he denies the possibility of conceiving self- 
existence in the first chapters of his book he does not 
hesitate to set up ' persistent force ' as the highest sci- 
entific truth in the latter part of his book. His ' per- 
sistent force,' for the reason that it 'implies the con- 
ception of infinite past time, which is an impossibility,' 
is a phrase that could have no idea corresponding to it, 
according to his philosophy. 

" Now, if we really can know the infinity of space 
and time, and the absoluteness implied in causality, it 
is a matter of great concern in education. For science 
is coming to be written and taught with these agnostic 
assumptions explicitly stated at every turn. There is 
nothing about natural science that warrants such agnos- 
ticism. It is only the teachers and expounders of it 
who have adopted a false psychology, and who give 
science their own point of view. 

" As we have seen, the true doctrine of causality 
leads to valid conceptions of self-activity. In Chapter 
IY, Section IY, we have described the three stages of 
thought. The second stage sets up relativity as a su- 
preme principle, and is pantheistic. The lowest stage 
of thought is atheistic, because it makes all things alike 
independent realities. The second stage makes all things 
dependent and subordinate to an ultimate blind force 
which swallows up all special forms of existence. The 
third stage of thinking reaches the ideas of the infinite 
and the absolute, and comprehends and recognizes the 
attributes of life, moral freedom, immortality, and the 
divine. 

" With a belief that the words 'infinite' and ' abso- 
lute ' do not express anything to which we may think 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 165 

any meaning, all religious and all moral and all sesthetic 
ideas must be set aside altogether, or else explained 
physiologically, or perhaps shown up as ' survivals ' of 
crude early epochs of development. Religious ideas 
have been explained as a ' disease of language.' The 
sun myths that have furnished the symbols and meta- 
phors for religious ideas are looked upon rather as the 
substantial meaning, and the spiritual ideas which have 
found expression in those symbols are regarded by such 
agnostics as spurious and unwarranted outgrowths. 

" So freedom and moral responsibility, the sheet- 
anchor of man's higher life in institutions, has been de- 
nied, and is still denied, by all who deny the true 
import of causality, and who set up in its place an ' in- 
variable sequence.' Herbert Spencer, in the first Ameri- 
can edition of his ' Data of Psychology ' (page 220), says : 
' Psychical changes either conform to law or they do 
not. If they do not conform to law, this work, in com- 
mon with all works on the subject, is sheer nonsense ; 
no science of psychology is possible. If they do con- 
form to law there can not be any such thing as free 
will.' 

" The physiological psychologists, instead of explain- 
ing the nerves and brain as servants of mind, are prone 
to make them the originating source and masters of 
mind. 

" But, according to our explanation of time, space, 
and causality, we are bound to see the soul as a substan- 
tial self-activity and original cause which acts on its en- 
vironment really m assimilation and digestion, taking up 
matter and converting it into living tissue — vegetable 
or animal cells ; and it reacts ideally against its envi- 



166 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ronment in sense-perception, representation, and thought. 
It constructs the ideas of objects, places them in space 
and time, and thereby perceives those objects — not de- 
stroying them by the operation as the process of diges- 
tion does." * 

Truth. — " Creation reveals its creator. Self-activity 
can be revealed only in self -activities. The plant re- 
veals self-activity in its growth. It acts upon its en- 
vironment, changes it, stamps upon it its own nature, 
and adds it to its own structure, changing inorganic 
elements into vegetable cells. Plant life thus reveals 
the principle of self-activity. Animal life feels and 
moves itself ; both feeling and locomotion are forms of 
self-activity. Feeling is a reproduction of the environ- 
ment by the self-activity and within the self-activity. 
Locomotion is the origination of movement in a body 
by the self- activity that has caused it to grow. Human 
consciousness is self -activity in the form of free and im- 
mortal personality. Even the inorganic world assumes 
globular shape and revolves on its axis, and also in an 
orbit. Its movement in returning cycles symbolically 
points back to absolute self-activity as its creator. 

" The phases of nature found in the revolving globe, 
the plant, the animal, reflect, but do not adequately 
reveal, the principle of self-activity. Man alone in his 
intelligence and will reveals it ; for man possesses the 
capacity for infinite culture. He can grow in knowl- 
edge and wisdom, and he can grow in holiness forever, 
by the exercise of his self-activity." f 



* " Illinois School Journal," vol. viii, pp. 107-109. 

f " The Chautauquan," vol. vi, pp. 438, 439, May, 1886. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 167 

" The scientific view finds the general or universal. 
First it discovers classes ; next, laws ; then causal prin- 
ciples. Science inventories facts, identifying them as 
falling under classes. Then it goes back of the idea of 
class and regards the energy that produces a class of 
facts by continual action according to a fixed form. 
This fixed form of action is called law. It rises above 
the idea of law to the idea of purpose or adaptation to 
end. That is to say, it discovers evolution or progress- 
ive development. In the view of evolution there is a 
goal toward which relatively lower orders are progress- 
ing, and the facts, forces, and laws are seen as parts of 
a great world-process which explains all. At this point 
science rises into philosophy. Philosophy is science 
which investigates all facts and phenomena in view of 
a final or ultimate principle — the first principle of the 
universe. When science comes to study all objects in 
view of the principle of evolution it has transcended 
the stage of mind whose highest object is to discover 
classes ; likewise the stage that makes law an ultimate. 
Besides efficient cause which makes or produces some 
new state or condition there is * final cause ' or purpose — 
design or ' end and aim.' The theory of evolution takes 
into consideration this idea of the 'end and aim' of 
changes in nature. It ranges or ranks all phenomena 
according to their development or realization of an ideal. 
Now it is evident that purpose, design, or < final cause ' 
is an ideal that can have existence for a being (i. e., con- 
scious existence) only in so far as it is a soul or mind. 
A living being like a plant, which can grow but not 
feel, does not perceive or feel its ideal, and yet its ideal 
guides and directs the activity of its efficient cause or 



168 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

active force. The ideal is only 'law' to the plant. 
Eut in the lowest form of animal life there is a feeling 
of want — that is to say, the want of an ideal different 
from its real. We can observe even the lowest animals 
moving in order to adjust themselves to the environment, 
or to appropriate the environment for food. As an ex- 
ternal phenomenon we should never be able to explain 
such movements, because we can not perceive ideals 
with our external senses. We interpret such move- 
ments through our own introspection. We can feel 
wants and be conscious of motives. We can therefore 
recognize in a being the existence of introspection in 
the form of feeling, or in some higher form, only be- 
cause we exercise the activity of introspection ourselves. 

" Strange as it may appear, therefore, we conduct 
even external observation by means of introspection. 
Natural science, in adopting the theory of evolution, 
advances to the stage wherein it makes it its chief ob- 
ject to recognize development from a lower stage toward 
a higher — the progressive realization of an ideal. The 
ideal is unconscious in the inorganic world and in the 
plant world, but acts only as law or as vitality. In the 
animal world it is conscious of this ideal, and feels it as 
appetite or represents it in the form of a mental image. 

" The evolution theory recognizes introspection as ex- 
isting in the objective world — it sees in Nature a tend- 
ency to develop such beings as possess internality and 
energize to realize their ideals. It is curious to note 
that this movement in science begins by the utter repu- 
diation of what is called teleology — i. e., it sets aside the 
old doctrine of design which looked for marks of exter- 
nal adaptation of nature to ulterior spiritual uses — such 



MAN : A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 169 

external design as one finds in a watch where the va- 
rious parts are artificially adapted to produce what they 
never would have produced naturally. Such external 
teleology ignored the immanent teleology of nature. 
By rejecting the old mechanical teleology, which makes 
nature a machine in the hand of God, evolution has 
come to see the teleology which God has breathed into 
nature — to see, in short, that nature is through and 
through teleological. Nature is, in every particle of it, 
governed by ideals, which, however, are not- perceived 
except by introspection. Matter is heavy; and falls, for 
example, only because it obeys an ideal — an ideal of 
which it is entirely unconscious, and yet which is mani- 
fested in it in the form of weight. Gravity is the 
manifestation of the unity of one body with another. 
The unity is ideal or potential, but its manifestation is 
real force, real attraction. 

"This subject of introspection thus leads out to 
the end of the world and reappears underneath the 
method of modern natural science which, studies all 
objects in their history — in their evolution. Strangely 
enough the scientists of the present day decry in psy- 
chology what they call the ' introspective method.' 
And just as in the case of the repudiation of teleology, 
they are bound to return to some other form of what 
they repudiate. Renounce teleology and you find noth- 
ing but teleology in everything, Renounce introspec- 
tion and you are to find introspection the fundamental 
moving principle of all nature. All things have their 
explanation in a blind attempt on the part of nature to 
look at itself. 

" One more remark : A blind tendency in nature to 
1G 



170 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

develop some ideal implies as its logical condition a com- 
pletely realized ideal in the absolute first principle in 
which nature is given its being. If nature is evolution 
— a process moving toward self-consciousness — it is no 
complete and independent process, but a means used by 
an absolute personal being — God — for the creation of 
living souls in his own image." * 

" If the standpoint of reflection upon the facts and 
processes of the world is that of theism, the outlook is en- 
tirely different than from that of atheism or pantheism. 

" Instead of a formless highest principle which is 
hostile to the permanence of all particular individuals, 
a highest principle is set up, whose nature is perfect 
form. Perfect form contains not only the forming 
principle, but also the formed ; it is self-determined and 
self-active, and hence subject and object. For theism 
finds the ^ultimate, and absolute to be personality or per- 
fect form instead of the negation of all form. Hence 
the world-process is to be interpreted rather as the evo- 
lution of this perfect form or conscious being, rather 
than as a process of producing individualities with no 
purpose except to annul them. There is an ideal at 
the summit of the universe,^perfect personality^ the goal 
toward which creation moves. Hence with theism there 
is immortality for man, and infinite progress possible. 
The divine Being is perfect form, and its influence 
gives a tendency in the universe toward the survival of 
whatever reaches conscious personality. It is under- 
stood here that personality implies consciousness and 
free will. Personality, according to theism, is not per 

* " Illinois School Journal," vol. yii, pp. 347-349, April, 1888. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 171 

se finite and limited, but in the true form of infinitudes 
because it is self-determination, self-activity, and not 
something which is originated and sustained by some- 
thing else. Imperfect creatures, like men, participate 
in this self-activity, and have the possibility of infinitely 
growing into it by their own free activity." * 

" Let us turn our attention to the aspect of modern 
science that is least identified with philosophical think- 
ing — namely, its empirical method. If we can learn 
by our investigation what it presupposes, we shall find 
ourselves in a position to determine the' answer to the 
objection made to all philosophical and theological con- 
clusions whatever — the objection, namely, from the 
standpoint of ' positive ' or empirical science, to the ef- 
fect that we can not transcend experience, and that ex- 
perience is only possible in regard to finite and relative 
objects, and in no wise possible in regard to an ultimate 
principle. On this ground it utterly repudiates what it 
calls ' introspection,' and the ' method of introspection.' 
Moreover, it declares against all generalizations not 
based on and derived from external experiment, claim- 
ing that all scientific knowledge is knowledge obtained 
through specialization and actual inventory of details. 
It thus rejects ail inferences of a theological character 
and holds them to be unwarranted by science. 

"It is not the necessity of specialization for pur- 
poses of making an inventory of nature that militates 
against philosophy or theology, for why should not both 
these exist as well as specialized inventorying % It is 
the attitude of the scientists against all general surveys. 

* Vol. 19, pp. 411, 412. 



172 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

They assume that these general surveys are not only 
unnecessary, but vicious in all science ; hence they deny 
the existence of a scientific philosophy or theology. 
But this assumption of scientists can be shown to be 
wholly grounded on a misapprehension of their own 
procedure in scientific knowing. It is due, in other 
words, to an incorrect account of the processes involved 
in the scientific method itself. It is a simple matter to 
initiate and carry on some one of the scientific processes 
by which discoveries are made, but the system of science 
as a whole is presupposed as a sort of invisible guide 
or * norm 'that makes possible the act of specialization. 
We have division of labor and the specialization of the 
work of the individual, because of the system of col- 
lection and distribution which commerce carries on, and 
by which it supplies each with the needed food, cloth- 
ing, and shelter that he does not produce, for the reason 
that he is engaged in his special vocation that furnishes 
only one of the many required necessities. 

" The special scientist can not confine his attention 
to one subject without definition and limitation effected 
by the collective labors of his fellows, not only in their 
special departments, lying contiguous to his own, but as 
well by their labors to state the relations of the special 
results to each other. . . . The specialist sometimes 
supposes that his industry is all that is required for the 
creation of science in its completeness. He condemns 
what is called the philosophy of his subject, as though 
it were premature generalization and unwarranted sys- 
tematizing. On the other hand, it must be confessed, 
that the philosopher is apt to be impatient at the plod- 
ding toil and narrow gains of the specialist. But the 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIYE INDIVIDUAL. 173 

fact that it needs both species of investigation becomes 
evident when we look to the practical field of human 
activity. Man must act as well as think. 

"The will executes while the intellect surveys or 
analyzes. In the performance of a deed the will should 
act in view of all the circumstances, but this view of 
all the circumstances is an intellectual survey. Hence 
human action demands a general survey of the cir- 
cumstances before it in order to act rationally. Suppose 
we omit the philosophical activity of the intellect — leave, 
out the generalization consequent on a survey of the 
whole — and try to act with the aid of the specializing 
intellect alone ? Then the will resolves and executes in 
view of a fragmentary circumstance, and does not weigh 
one particular motive with another. The result will be 
lame and impotent, because it lacks considerateness and 
looks neither before nor after, but acts from one motive, 
and a trivial one, because it is an intentionally special 
view and not a general survey. 

" The necessity of practical activity in any province, 
therefore, demands the intellectual activity of forming a 
general survey, as well as the intellectual activity of 
analyzing and specializing. It is important to see how 
these co-ordinate. 

" Rational will-power is the will under the guidance 
of directive intelligence. This intelligence surveys 
various objects of action and selects one of them as de- 
sirable; it surveys likewise various modes of action, 
and adopts what seems to be the best. Now, it is clear 
enough that analytical investigation may divide and 
subdivide objects and means forever ; if the will waits 
for the completion of analytical investigation, it waits 



174: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

forever. The analytical intelligence can never arrive at 
a conclusion. Its analysis only serves to open np new 
vistas of further investigation. But at any point of its 
procedure it is possible for the intellect to stop its ana- 
lytical investigation and unify its results by comparison, 
sum all up in a general conclusion, saying : ' In view of 
all that is thus far discovered, this conclusion will fol- 
low.' The trend is discoverable when only two facts 
are ascertained ; a third fact may reveal a modification 
of the previously discovered trend, or, perhaps, only 
confirm it. The practical activity, whenever called 
upon to perform a deed demands a cessation of analyti- 
cal investigation and the interposition of a general sur- 
vey, in order to discover the trend that is revealed by 
the facts discovered ; with this provisional view of the 
whole, it acts as rationally as is possible with its im- 
perfect intelligence. 

" Admitting that the increase of light by the fur- 
ther discovery of new facts by the aid of the analytical 
intellect is a never-ending process, we shall admit also 
that the will may act more and more rationally accord- 
ing to the quantity of analytical, specializing work of 
the intellect that has been performed. Bat there can 
be no direct step from the specializing activity to the 
will-activity of man. There must always supervene a 
summing up of those special results in a general sur- 
vey before they become of any practical use. The jury 
must not permit themselves to decide until the case is 
closed. The case must be closed when only a part of 
the facts are in, because only a part of the facts can be 
ascertained. In any science the facts can never be all 
ascertained, because each fact is divisible by analysis 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 175 

into constituent facts, each process into constituent 
processes forever. This is evident from the infinite 
divisibility of time and space. Therefore we may affirm 
without contradiction that specializing science must ad- 
mit the necessary intervention of the philosophic ac- 
tivity which takes general views or surveys before its 
results can become useful in human activity. 

" But this is not all ; if we examine what consti- 
tutes a science we shall be compelled to acknowledge 
that mere specializing analytical industry can never 
produce a science. Science is systematic knowledge. 
Facts are so united to other facts within a science that 
each fact sheds light upon all facts ; and every fact upon 
each fact. From the special facts discovered by the 
analytical activity of the intellect, not only no practical 
use would ensue, but no theoretic use except through 
their synthesis by general surveys. A science results 
only after the particular facts obtained by analytic spe- 
cialization are summed up. The case must be closed, 
and for the moment the assumption made that all the 
facts are in, if we are to discover the connecting link 
which binds the facts into a system. Without system 
no mutual illumination occurs among the facts ; each is 
opaque and dark. So long as a fact in a science does 
not yet help explain other facts, and receive explanation 
from them, it is as yet no organic part of the science. 
It is itself an evidence of the imperfection of the sci- 
ence. The science appears only when the general sur- 
vey has become possible. Facts are united into a sys- 
tem by principles — energies that include forces and 
laws. 

" Studying more carefully the function of the syn- 



176 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

thetic activity of the mind as seen in the general sur- 
vey, its difference from the analytic activity becomes 
clear. The analytic specializing divides and subdivides 
the fact or process before it, and goes from wholes to 
parts. The synthetic discovers unities of facts by means 
of relations of dependence. This phase or fact and 
that phase or fact are parts or results of one process, 
and so it concludes that they may be comprehended in 
one. Then, again, it steps back from the discovered 
unity and looks for relation to other unities and its de- 
pendence on a higher process, which unites it with co- 
ordinate processes. Each new generalization is only an 
element of a higher generalization. 

" Science demands inventory, general survey, and 
experiment. Even in the matter of making an inven- 
tory, science avails itself of general survey under the 
form of definition. "No definition can be made without 
such a survey, for it involves an attempt to grasp to- 
gether a whole class under some common characteristic. 
Without the definition hovering in the mind, how shall 
one know which facts to include iu its inventory and 
which to exclude ? To take any and all facts without 
limiting the selection within a category, would be the 
purest futility. Inventory proceeds, therefore, by rec- 
ognizing new individuals as belonging to a previously 
described class. Within this class new characteristics 
are to be recognized and new sub-classifications made. 
Experiment, too, starts from a principle already gener- 
alized or assumed as an hypothesis — thus grounded in a 
general survey, like the inventory-process, only far more 
explicit. A fact is to be found and identified by the 
inventory ; but by the experiment it is to be con- 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 177 

structed. The theory or hypothesis is derived from 
general survey, and it furnishes the rule for the con- 
struction of the fact. If it finds the reality to accord 
with it, there is verification of the theory or hypothesis 
— the principle is confirmed. If the reality does not re- 
sult according to the theory, there is a refutation of it. 
The theory was simply an extension of the conclusion 
drawn from the general survey from what was before 
known. 

"Analytical specialization is most successful in the 
form of experiment, and is guided by hypotheses. 
Witness the immense fertility of biological research 
in recent science when its industry is guided by the 
Darwinian hypothesis. That hypothesis is, of course, 
like all theories, the result of a general survey, the syn- 
thetical activity of the mind. This is what may be 
called the philosophical activity of the mind. It closes 
the case, stops the process of analysis and inventory of 
new facts, assumes that all facts are in, and asks in view 
of them : ' What unity, what principle is presupposed ? ' 
The answer to this question unites into a system what 
is known, and furnishes an hypothesis or provisional 
theory for further analysis and inventory of special 
facts. Thus the philosophical activity enters science as 
an indispensable factor, and alternates with the analyti- 
cal activity that discovers new facts. 

" But there is another phase of the synthetic activity 
of mind which transcends this hypothetic synthesis, this 
making of provisional theories. It is the a 'priori syn- 
thesis that underlies all mental activity. Intellect rec- 
ognizes by an a priori act time and space as the logical 
condition of the existence of all nature — the entire to- 



178 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tality of facts and events. What it knows of time and 
space is formulated in the science of mathematics as so 
much theory of nature that is known a priori. So 
much is not in need of experimental verification, because 
it is certain at the very outset that nothing can exist in 
the world unless it conforms to the mathematical laws 
of time and space. Besides the mathematical elements 
of theory there are other a priori elements equally sov- 
ereign in their sway over experience ; such are the law 
of causality, the principles of excluded middle and con- 
tradiction, the ideas of quality and quantity, the idea 
of the conservation of energy. The mariner plows the 
sea, looking from wave to wave, passing from hori- 
zon to horizon, but he holds on his course only by the 
observations which he makes ever and anon of the eter- 
nal stars. So the specialist lifts his eyes from the mul- 
titudinous seas of facts through which he moves, to the 
fixed lights of mathematical truth, or to the planets of 
provisional theory, and is able to go forward to a desired 
haven. 

" The synthetic activity of the intellect looks at the 
history of its object. It expects to find in the history 
of its growth and development a complete revelation 
of the nature of its object. That which offers itself to 
the senses as the object perceived is not the whole of 
the phenomenon, but only one of its manifestations. 
We may call the phenomenon the entire process of 
manifestation, including all the phases. In one moment 
some one phase is exhibited, in another moment some 
other phase. 

" The acorn which we see lying on the ground is not 
the whole process of its manifestation — not the whole 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 179 

phenomenon. It is only a temporary phase in the growth 
of an oak. In the course of time this acorn would 
sprout from the soil and become, first, a sapling, then 
a great tree bearing acorns again. The acorn itself de- 
pends upon the whole process which forms the life of 
the oak, and is to be explained only by that process. So 
likewise any other phase or immediate manifestation in 
the life of the oak — its existence as a young sapling, 
or as a great tree, or as a crop of leaves, blossoms, or, 
indeed, a single leaf or blossom or bud. Science sees 
the acorn in the entire history of the life of the oak ; 
it sees the oak in the entire history of all its species, in 
whatever climes they grow ; it sees the history of the 
oak in the broader and more general history of the life 
of all trees, of all plants; and, finally, it considers 
plant life in its relations to the mineral below it, and to 
the animal above it. 

" To see an object in its necessary relations to the 
rest of the world in time and space is to comprehend it 
scientifically. 

" The object just before our senses now is only a par- 
tial revelation of some being that has a process or history, 
and we must investigate its history to gain a scientific 
knowledge of it. Its history will reveal what there is in 
it. ~No object is a complete revelation of itself at one 
and the same moment. The water which we lift to our 
lips to drink has two other forms ; it may be solid, as 
ice, or an elastic fluid, as steam. It can be only one of 
these at a time. Science learns to know what water is 
by collecting all its phases — solid, liquid, and gaseous — 
and its properties as revealed in the history of its rela- 
tions to all other objects in the world. So, likewise, 



180 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the pebble which we pick up on the street is to be com- 
prehended through its geological history — its upheaval 
as primitive granite, its crushing by the glaciers of the 
Drift Period, and its grinding and polishing under ice- 
bergs. 

" We must trace whatever we see through its ante- 
cedent forms, and learn its cycle of birth, growth, and 
decay. This is the advice of modern science. We 
must learn to see each individual thing in the perspect- 
ive of its history. All aspects of nature have been, or 
will be, brought under this method of treatment. Even 
the weather of to-day is found to be conditioned by 
antecedent weather, and the Signal Bureau now writes 
the history of each change in the weather here as a 
progress of an atmospheric wave from west to east. 
The realm which was thought a few years since to be 
hopelessly under the dominion of chance, or subject to 
incalculably various conditions and causes, is found to 
be capable of quite exact investigation. This is all due to 
the method of studying each particular thing as a part 
of a process. When the storm-signal stations extend all 
over the world we shall leam to trace the history of 
atmospheric waves and vortices back to the more gen- 
eral movements of the planet, diurnal and annual, and 
we shall find the connecting links which make a con- 
tinuous history for the weather of to-day with the eter- 
nal process of exchange going on between the frigid 
and torrid air-zones, and trace the relation of this to the 
telluric process of earthquakes and the periodic vari- 
ation of sun-spots and their dependence upon the orbital 
revolution of Jupiter and other planets. Doubtless we 
shall not see a science of astrology, predicting the for- 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 181 

tune of the individual man by the foreordained aspects 
of the planets under which he was born ; but it is quite 
probable that, when the history of the meteorological 
process becomes better known, we shall be able to cast 
the horoscope of the weather for an entire season. 

" This method of science, now consciously followed 
by our foremost men of science, is not an accidental 
discovery, but one which necessarily flows out of the 
course of human experience. For what is experience 
but the process of collecting the individual perceptions 
of the moment into one consistent whole ? Does not 
experience correct the imperfection of first views and 
partial insights by subsequent and repeated observa- 
tions % The present has to be adjusted to the past and 
to the future. Man can not choose ; he must learn in 
the school of experience, and the process of experience 
blindly followed upon compulsion, when chosen by con- 
scious insight as its method, becomes science. 

"The difference, therefore, between the scientific 
activity of the mind and the ordinary common -sense 
activity lies in this difference of method and point of 
view. The ordinary habit of mind occupies itself with 
the objects of the senses as they are forced upon its 
attention by surrounding circumstances, and it does not 
seek and find their unity. The scientific habit of mind 
chooses its object, and persistently follows its thread of 
existence through all its changes and relations. 

" Science has not been conscious of its method to 
such a degree that it could follow it without deviation 
until quite recent times. 

" We might say that Darwin, of our own genera- 
tion, is the first to bring about the use of the historical 
17 



182 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

method as a conscious guide to investigation. And, 
indeed, although science has found the true method, it 
has not seen the ground of the method — its ultimate 
presupposition. It has much to say of evolution, and 
justifies its method by the doctrine of development of 
all that is from antecedent conditions. Homogeneity 
and simplicity characterize the first stages ; complexity 
and difference of quality and function characterize the 
later stages. There is growth in a special direction. 
By survival we learn to know what* is most in accord 
with the final purpose of nature. But we can not see 
this teleology or final purpose except by taking very 
large arcs of the total circle of development. 

" The reason for this historical method, however, is 
to be found in the necessity already shown, to wit : all 
total or whole beings — that is to say, independent beings 
— are self-determined beings. Self- activity is the basis 
of all causal action, all dependence, all transference of 
influence. Hence it follows that when we behold a 
manifestation, phase, or incomplete exhibition of some- 
thing, we look further to see the whole of which it is a 
part. We look back to its antecedents, and forward to 
its consequents, and by these construct its history. We 
have not found it as a whole until we have found it as 
energy that initiates its own series of changes and guides 
them to a well-defined goal. The oak as a living organ- 
ism thus initiates its series of reactions against its envi- 
ronment of earth and air, and converts the elements 
which it takes up from without into vegetable cells, and 
with these builds its organs and carries itself forward 
in a well-defined method of growth from acorn through 
sapling, tree, blossom, fruitage, to acorn again as the 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIYE INDIVIDUAL. 183 

result. All inorganic processes, likewise, when traced 
into their history, exhibit the form of cycles, or revo- 
lutions, that return into the same form that they began 
with, thus repeating their beginning, or rather making 
a sort of spiral advance upon it. The energy that re- 
peats again and again its cycle of activity is either life 
itself or an image or simulacrum of life. The annual 
round of the seasons, the daily succession of day and 
night, the cycle of growth of the planets themselves, 
or even of the solar systems — each of these is an image 
of life, as Plato long ago pointed out. All points back 
to an efficient energy somewhere that is its own cause in 
the sense that it originates its movements and changes 
and causes its own realization." * 

" To the question whether modern natural science 
is pantheistic, therefore, we are constrained to answer, 
yes, in its middle stages of thought, because the second 
stage (see Chapter IV, Section IY) of thinking is in its 
very nature pantheistic. But modern natural science is 
likewise atheistic when we view it as reflected in minds 
that have not got beyond the first stage of thought. 
They do not reach a thought of a unity transcending all 
finite individuals, but rest in the idea of an indefinite 
multiplicity of atomic individuals. But science is the- 
istic in all minds that see the trend of its method. The 
study of all things in the light of the history of their 
evolution discovers a progress toward ' perfect form ' or 
conscious being. Stated in the law of survival of the 
fittest, the universe is so constituted as to place a premi- 
um on the development of intellect and will-power. 

* Vol. 19, p. 414-423. 



184 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

This would be impossible on the basis of pantheism. 
In proportion to the degree of self-activity reached by 
any individual, it achieves control over nature, and 
possesses ability to make social combinations with its 
fellows. By this capacity for social combination, man 
of all animals is able to move against nature in an ag- 
gregate as a race, and infinitely surpass his efforts as an 
individual or as a multitude of individuals detached 
from organization into a social whole. It follows that 
in proportion as science directs itself to the study of 
human institutions, it becomes impressed with the supe- 
riority of spiritual laws over the laws governing organic 
and inorganic bodies. By intelligence and will man 
can form institutions and make possible the division of 
labor and the collection and distribution of the aggre- 
gate productions of the entire race. Each individual 
is enabled by this to contribute to the good of the 
whole, and likewise to share in the aggregate of all the 
fruits of industry. 

" While material bodies exclude each other and do 
not participate, spirits, endowed with intelligence and 
will, participate and share in such a manner as to 
raise the individual to the potency of the race. This 
amounts to making the individual a universal. When 
each receives the fruits of the physical labor of all, each 
fares as well as if he were sole master and all mankind 
were his slaves ; but as master he would be charged with 
the supervision and direction of all — an infinite burden ; 
this burden he avoids in free, social combination, where- 
in each for his own interest works at his best for the 
sake of the market of the world, and thus benefits all, 
though incited by selfish desire for gain. The material 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 185 

productions of the race are, however, of small moment 
compared with the fund of human experience, which is 
first lived and then collected and distributed to each 
man, so that each lives the life of all and profits by the 
experience of all. The scientific man inventories na- 
ture through the sense-perception of all his fellow-men, 
and assists his reflections by the aid of their ideas. 
The life of the whole is vicarious ; the individual gets 
its results without having to render for them the 
equivalent of pain and labor incident to the original 
experience. Participation is the supreme principle of 
the life of spirit — of intelligent and volitional being. 
Experience has discovered, by the mistakes of myriads 
of lives, what human deeds are conducive to the life 
of participation which endows the individual with the 
fruits of the labor and the wisdom of this experience 
of the race. Hence the will acts in the channels 
marked out as co-operative with the whole. This is 
moral action. 

" As science widens its domain and correlates one 
province with another, it comes to realize in conscious- 
ness the spiritual principle of participation which makes 
science itself possible as the accredited knowledge at- 
tained by the joint labors of the race. It comes to 
realize, moreover, that its method implies in another 
shape the same principle, because it makes each fact 
throw light on every other, while it explains each in 
the acccumulated light of all the rest. Using the 
symbol of society, and its principle of participation 
which is the essence of spiritual life, we may say that 
science spiritualizes nature by setting each of its indi- 
vidual facts in the light of all facts, and thus making 



186 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

it universal by the addition of the totality of its envi- 
ronment. 

" Unless the universe were based on a spiritual ba- 
sis, whence could come the significance of the universal 
as the illuminating and explaining principle ? Just as 
the principle of the division of labor in the province of 
productive industry, so, too, the principle of specializa- 
tion in the prosecution of scientific investigation is 
rendered possible by the spiritual principle of partici- 
pation. It presupposes the collection and distribution 
of the results of all and to all. While material prod- 
ucts diminish by distribution, spiritual products, in 
the shape of moral habits and intellectual insights, in- 
crease by being shared. The more a truth is reflected 
in the minds of others, the better it is defined and un- 
derstood. The investigator may safely trust himself on 
his lonely journey into details, because he is sure that 
these details are fragments of the total process and or- 
ganically related to the whole, so that he is bound to 
find the unity again when he has completed the dis- 
covery of the history of the fragment before him. The 
typical man of science, Cuvier, can see the whole ani- 
mal in one of his bones ; Agassiz can see the whole fish 
in one of his scales; Lyell can see the history of a 
pebble in its shape and composition ; Winckelmann 
sees the whole statue of a Greek goddess in a fragment 
of the nose or the angle of the opening eyelids. l All 
is in all,' as Jacotot used to say. But not the fulness 
of realization of the highest is in the lowest. The low- 
est presupposes the highest as its Creator, of which it 
is the manifestation, although not the adequate reve- 
lation. By so much as material bodies lack of self- 



MAN; A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 187 

activity, they lack of revealing the highest principle. 
According to the principle of evolution, all things are 
on the way toward the realization of the perfect form. 
The perfect form is self-activity, as personal intelli- 
gence and will. While in the lower orders of being 
the individual is furthest off from realizing the entire 
species within its singularity, yet in the higher orders 
that possess intelligence and will this becomes possible, 
and each may, by continued activity, enter into the 
heritage of the race in knowledge and ethical wisdom. 
The perfect form is that complete self-determination 
which constitutes Absolute Personality. Finite rela- 
tivity is grounded on the self-relativily of such an Ab- 
solute. In the investigation of this field of relativity 
science is discovering the presupposition, and in this 
quest it is, therefore, on its way toward theism." * 

" A precondition of divine revelation is the creation 
of beings who can think the idea of self -activity. The 
idea must be involved in knowing as logical condition, 
although it need not become explicit without special 
reflection. Philosophy is a special investigation directed 
to theological conditions of existence and experience, 
and so likewise theology and religion are special occu- 
pations of the soul. The soul must find within itself 
the idea of the divine before it can recognize the divine 
in any manifestation in the external world. 

" In discovering and defining the a priori ideas in 
the mind philosophy renders essential service to religion, 
because it brings about certain conviction in regard to 
the objects which religion holds as divine, and conceives 

* Vol. 19, pp. 425-428. 



188 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

as transcending the world although it has not yet learned 
their logical necessity. It imagines, perhaps, that the 
mind can have experience without presupposing in its 
constitution the divine doctrines which it has received 
through tradition. But philosophy may arrive at cer- 
tainty in regard to the first principle, and the origin 
and destiny of the world and man without making man 
religious. He must receive the doctrine into his heart, 
that is the special function of religion. To know the 
doctrine is necessary — that is philosophy and theology ; 
to receive it into the heart and make it one's life is re- 
ligion. 

" Philosophy has suffered under the imputation of 
being too ambitious, aspiring to ' take all knowledge for 
its province' or to usurp the place of religion and de- 
stroy the Church. "We have seen that the mind possesses 
a priori logical conditions which enter experience and 
render it possible; we have seen, likewise, that the 
mind, in its first stages of consciousness, does not sepa- 
rate these from experience and reflect on them as special 
objects. It does not perceive their regal aspect, nor 
recognize them as fundamental conditions of existence. 
Nevertheless, it sees what it sees by their means, and 
may, by special reflection, become conscious of their 
essential relation. But this higher form of reflection is 
preceded by many stages of spiritual education in which 
partial insight into these a priori ideas is attained. 
Special phases, particular aspects of them, are perceived. 
In the acquirement and use of language, in the forma- 
tion of ethical habits, in the creation and appreciation 
of poetry and art, in the pursuit of science, and especially 
in the experience of the religious life, these a priori 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 189 

presuppositions appear again and again as essential ob- 
jects under various guises — a sort of masquerade, in 
which these ' lords of life,' as Emerson (see Emerson's 
sublime essay on ' Experience,' in which he describes 
the soul's ascent through five stages of insight) calls 
them, pass before the soul. 

" The knowledge of these a priori elements in ex- 
perience, although a special one, is the most difficult of 
acquirement. It is not a field that can be exhausted 
any more than the field of mathematics, or the field of 
natural science, or that of social science.' New acquisi- 
tions are new tools for greater and greater acquisition. 
We must expect, therefore, that the idea of self-activity, 
which we have found as the first principle, will yield us 
new insights into the being and destiny of nature and 
man, so long as we devote ourselves to its contempla- 
tion." * 

Beauty : Its Elements. — " There is a theory that the 
primary function of art is amusement. What makes this 
degrading theory plausible is the fact that there is sensu- 
ous enjoyment in the contemplation of works of art, but 
this may be traced to something higher than sensuous 
sources. The sensuous elements in art are regularity 
and harmony. 1. Regularity is the recurrence of the 
same — mere repetition. A rude people scarcely reaches 
a higher stage of art. The desire for ornament is grati- 
fied by a string of beads or a fringe of some sort. It is 
a love of rhythm. The human form divine is not regu- 
lar enough to suit the savage. It is not regular enough 
to suit his taste. He must accordingly make it beauti- 

* Vol. 17, pp. 311, 312. 



190 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ful by regular ornaments, or by deforming it in some 
way — by tattooing it, for example. Why does regular- 
ity please ? Why does recurrence or repetition gratify 
the taste of the child or savage ? The answer to these 
questions is to be found in the generalization that the 
soul delights to behold itself, and that human nature is 
' mimetic,' as Aristotle called it, signifying symbol-mak- 
ing. Man desires to know himself and to reveal himself 
in order that he may comprehend himself. Hence, he 
is an art-producing animal. Whatever suggests to him 
his deep, underlying spiritual nature gives him a strange 
pleasure. The nature of consciousness is partly revealed 
in types and symbols of the rudest art. Chinese music, 
like the music of very young children, delights in mo- 
notonous repetitions that almost drive frantic any one 
with a cultivated ear. But all rhythm is a symbol of 
the first and most obvious fact of conscious intelligence 
or reason. 

u Consciousness is the knowing of the self by the 
self. There is subject and object and the activity of 
recognition. From subject to object there is distinction 
and difference, but with recognition, sameness, or iden- 
tity is perceived, and the distinction or difference is re- 
tracted. What is this simple rhythm but regularity? 
It is, we answer, regularity, but it is much more than 
this. But the child or savage delights in monotonous 
repetition, not possessing the slightest insight into the 
cause of his delight. His delight is, however, explicable 
through this fact of the identity in form between the 
rhythm of his soul-activity and the sense-perception by 
which he perceives regularity. 

"The sun-myth arises through the same feeling. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 191 

Wherever there is repetition, especially in the form of 
return to itself, there comes this conscious or unconscious 
satisfaction at beholding it. Hence especially circular 
movement, or movement in cycles, is the most wonder- 
ful of all the phenomena beheld by primitive man. 
Nature presents to his observation infinite differences. 
Out of the confused mass he traces some forms of re- 
currence ; day and night, the phases of the moon, the 
seasons of the year, genus and species in animals and 
plants, the apparent revolutions of the fixed stars, and 
the orbits of planets. These phenomena furnish him 
symbols or types in which to express his ideas concern- 
ing the divine principle that he feels to be first cause. 
To the materialistic student of sociology all religions are 
merely transfigured sun- myths. But to the deeper 
student of psychology it becomes clear that the sun- 
myth itself rests on the perception of identity between 
regular cycles and the rhythm which characterizes the 
activity of self-consciousness. And self -consciousness is 
felt and seen to be a form of being not on a par with 
mere transient, individual existence, but the essential 
attribute of the Divine Being, Author of all. 

" Here we see how deep-seated and significant is this 
blind instinct or feeling which is gratified by the seeing 
and hearing of mere regularity. The words which ex- 
press the divine in all languages, root in this sense-per- 
ception and aesthetic pleasure attendant on it. Philol- 
ogy, discovering the sun-myth origin of religious ex- 
pression, places the expression before the thing expressed, 
the symbol before the thing signified. It tells us that 
religions arise from a sort of disease in language which 
turns poetry into prose. But underneath the aesthetic 



192 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

feeling lies the perception of identity which makes pos- 
sible the trope or metaphor. 

" 2. Symmetry. Regularity expresses only the su- 
perficial perception of the nature of self-consciousness 
and reason. There is, as we have seen, a subject op- 
posed to itself as object. Antithesis is not simple repe- 
tition but opposition. The identity is therefore one of 
symmetry instead of regularity. Symmetry contains 
and expresses identity under difference. We can not 
put the left-hand glove on our right hand. The two 
hands correspond, but are not mere repetitions of the 
same. 

" It is a mark of higher sesthetic culture to prefer 
symmetry to regularity. It indicates a deeper feeling 
of the nature of the divine. Nations that have reached 
this stage show their taste by emphasizing the symmetry 
in the human form by ornaments and symmetrical ar- 
rangement of clothing. They correct the lack of sym- 
metry in the human form in the images of their gods. 
The face is on the front side of the head, but the god 
shall have a face on the back of his head, too, to com- 
plete the symmetry. The arms directed to the front of 
the body must also correspond to another pair of arms 
directed in the opposite direction. Perhaps perfect 
symmetry is still more exacting in its requirements, and 
demands faces with arms to match on the right and left 
sides of the body. To us the idols of the ancient Mexi- 
cans and Central Americans seem hideous. But it was 
the taste for symmetry that produced them. 

3. " Harmony is the object of the highest culture 
of taste. Regularity and symmetry are so mechanical 
in their nature that they afford only remote symbols of 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 193 

reason in its concreteness. They furnish the elements 
of art, but must be subordinated to a higher principle. 
Harmony is free from the mechanical suggestions of 
the lower principles, but it possesses in a greater degree 
the qualities which gave them their charm. Just as 
symmetry exhibits identity under a deeper difference 
than regularity, so harmony, again, presents us a still 
deeper unity underlying a wider difference. The unity 
of harmony is not a unity of sameness nor of corre- 
spondence merely, but a unity of adaptation to end or 
purpose. Mere symmetry suggests external constraint ; 
but in art there must be freedom expressed. Regu- 
larity is still more suggestive of mechanical necessity. 
Harmony boldly discards regularity and symmetry, re- 
taining them only in subordinate details, and makes all 
subservient to the expression of a conscious purpose. 
The divine is conceived as spiritual intelligence elevated 
above its material expression so far that the latter is 
only a means to an end. The Apollo Belvedere has no 
symmetry of arrangement in its limbs, and yet the dis- 
position of each suggests a different disposition of 
another in order to accomplish some conscious act, upon 
which the mind of the god is bent. All are different, 
and yet all are united in harmony for the realization of 
one purpose. 

" Here the human form with its lack of regularity 
and symmetry becomes beautiful. The nation has ar- 
rived at the perception of harmony, which is a higher 
symbolic expression of the divine than were the pre- 
vious elements. The human body is adapted to the ex- 
pression of conscious will, and this is freedom. The 
perfect subordination of the body to the will is grace- 



194 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

fulness. It is this which constitutes the beauty of 
classic art ; to have every muscle under perfect obedi- 
ence to the will — unconscious obedience — so that the 
slightest inclination or desire of the soul, if made an act 
of the will, finds expression in the body. When the 
soul is not at ease in the body, but is conscious of it as 
something separate, gracefulness departs and awkward- 
ness takes its place. The awkward person does not 
know what to do with his hands and arms ; he can not 
think just how he should carry his body or fix the mus- 
cles of his face. He chews a stick or bites a cigar, in 
order to have something to do with the facial muscles, 
or twirls a cane or twists his watch-chain; folds his 
arms before or behind, or even thrusts his hands into 
his pockets, in order to have some use for them which 
will restore a feeling of ease in his body. The soul is 
at ease in the body only when it is using it as a means 
of expression or action. 

" Harmony is this agreement of the inner and outer, 
of the will and the body, of the idea and its expression, 
so that the external leads us directly to the internal, of 
which it is the expression. Gracefulness then results, 
and gracefulness is the characteristic of classic or Greek 
art." * 

Beauty : Mediums of Expression. — " Art is the 
presentation of reason to man through his senses. Such 
union of reason with sensuous forms constitutes the 
beautiful, and Plato called the beautiful ' the splendor 
of the true.' Like this, the good is the presence of 
reason in the will. A philosophy of art has to find 

* " The Chautauquan," January, 1886, vol. vi, pp. 191, 192. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 195 

the rational element in the beautiful, and see how 
this rational element manifests itself in other prov- 
inces as the good and the true. It must also study the 
material side of expression, and learn the means used 
to render prose reality splendid with beauty. Highest 
philosophy always finds that reason is the supreme prin- 
ciple of the world. It is revealed in the world of na- 
ture and man as a Personal Creator. Philosophy un- 
dertakes to show reason as the ultimate presupposition 
in all existence and in all ideas. Art always assumes 
reason as this highest reality , and has nothing to do with 
proving it — it shows it. It takes some material — mar- 
ble, pigments, tones, words, events — and shapes these so 
as to exhibit reason acting as the ground and mediation 
of what is finite. There are reckoned fine provinces 
of art— architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and 
poetry. In this ascending scale we find that elements 
of time and space become less and less important, while 
the manifestation of reason becomes more adequate. 

" In architecture a rhythm is expressed as arising 
from the two forces — that of gravity pressing down, 
and that of the strength of the material which supports 
and constitutes the structure. A dim feeling in the soul 
recognizes its own strivings symbolized in the pillar or 
column or dome or spire or in the whole temple. 
The Egyptian felt the same feeling on looking at the 
pyramid which pierced the sky and rose into regions of 
light and clearness, as he did when he expressed his 
creed of transmigration of the soul. Even after the 
destroyer Death had done his worst, the soul should be 
born again, after three thousand years, in a new body. 
After gravitation has done its work, and the structures 



196 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of men have crumbled to dust, there still remains the 
form of the tumulus, rising as a hill. The pyramid 
imitates the form of the tumulus. 

" The poor Hindoo felt himself pressed down to 
the earth by the weight of ceremonies imposed by the 
doctrine of caste. He looked at one of his temples 
cut out of solid rock, and saw the symbol of himself 
standing there as one of the human columns supporting 
the roof and the mountain over it. The Greek, on the 
other hand, saw in his Parthenon, or in his Temple of 
Theseus, the perfect balance and proportion of upward 
and downward — of spirit and matter. His soul found 
complete bodily expression in the serene and cheerful 
statues of the gods, and those temples were the fitting 
abodes of such deities. 

" On the other hand, in after times, when men had 
come to aspire after a nearer approach to the divine, by 
renunciation of the body and its pleasures, they felt the 
need for another expression, and found it in the cathe- 
drals of Eouen and Tours, of Amiens and Cologne. 
The nothingness of earth, its dependence on what is 
above, is manifested by the architectural illusion that all 
lines aspire to what is above; the pillars seem to be 
fastened to the roof as the source of support, and to 
hold up the floor by tension, instead of supporting the 
roof by the thrust of the floor below. The pointed 
arch and the lofty pinnacles express this struggle of 
the finite to reach the spiritual point of repose above. 
In the domes of our American state-houses, we can see 
the tolerant principle of justice extending like the sky, 
over all alike, just as the Koman felt the potent prin- 
ciple of civil law, which articulates in words the forms 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 197 

of universal will, in which all men can act and not con- 
tradict themselves or each other. The pantheon ex- 
tended over all nations' gods, just as the blue dome, its 
prototype, extended over all peoples. 

" In sculpture, also, the Indian god, cross-legged on 
a lotus cup, the sitting statues of Memnon on the banks 
of the Nile ; the Jupiter Olympus, of Phidias ; the 
Moses of Michael Angelo, all utter their correspond- 
ences to the souls that made them and rejoiced in them. 

"Painting, music, and poetry, likewise have their 
epochs of symbolic, classic, and romantic, the first be- 
longing to those nations and times when, as in Egypt 
or in Asia, the mind of man could not perceive so 
clearly his likeness to the divine, nor lift himself so 
much above Nature. Classic art of Greece and Rome 
reaches the harmony of Nature and man, and portrays 
bodily freedom. Romantic or Christian art has found 
the spiritual truth which it is unable to express in sensu- 
ous forms, and therefore it offers the spectacle of a 
struggle against matter and what is earthy, and the pos- 
session of an invisible, immaterial support. The paint- 
ing can represent breadth, depth, and height, on a sur- 
face of insignificant size, by perspective, and thus, with 
very small material means, create an appearance of vast 
extent of space, while architecture must have actual size 
in order to produce its desired effects. Color brings 
out the expression of feeling and emotion, and thus en- 
dows the painter with the means of representing human 
character in its minuter shades of development, and es- 
pecially in its deepest internality. Music is thoroughly 
internal, and can go beyond painting in the respect in 
which painting first finds itself in advance of sculpture. 



198 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Poetry appeals through trope or metaphor and personi- 
fication directly to the productive imagination, and can 
produce the spiritual effects of all arts, as well as other 
effects exclusively its own. Its material is not marble 
or color, but the word, a product of human reason, so 
that in poetry reason is not only form, but also its own 
material. Poetry, therefore, by means of the word, 
which it uses musically, appeals to the thinking reason, 
and produces direct effects upon the soul, peculiarly its 
own, while all other arts act mediately through the senses 
of sight or hearing upon the feelings and imagination, 
and then reach the intellect by this indirect road. 

" Although each epoch of the world has its art, yet 
we can not afford to be very generous in conceding to 
all the principle of the realization of beauty. Only 
where freedom is conceived in the mind can there be 
produced beauty in art. Freedom in the body gives us 
the highest reach of plastic art — that of Greece and 
Home ; freedom from the body, the highest forms of 
romantic art. Art everywhere must presuppose a per- 
sonal principle in the world as its lord. In poetry we 
have this recognized in the very elements of poetic ex- 
pression, to wit, in trope and personification, which form 
the very brick and mortar of poetry. The whole world 
of Nature is viewed as instinct with spirit, and man looks 
upon each plant and animal, and even each thing and 
place, as having human personality. Thus what religion 
worships as the supreme, and thought recognizes as truth, 
art will insist upon seeing in the world of finite objects." * 



* " Concord Lectures on Philosophy," Summer School of 1882, 
pp. 117, 118. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 199 

Interpretation of " Art." — "The infinite is not 
manifested within any particular sphere of finitude, 
but rather exhibits itself in the collision of a finite with 
another finite without it. For a finite must by its very 
nature be limited from without, and the infinite, there- 
fore, not only includes any given finite sphere, but also 
its negation (or the other spheres which joined to it 
make up the whole). 

"Art is the manifestation of the infinite in the 
finite, it is said. Therefore this must mean that art 
has for its province the treatment of the collisions that 
necessarily arise between one finite sphere and another. 
In proportion as the collision portrayed by art is com- 
prehensive, and a type of all collisions in the universe, 
is it a high work of art. If, then, the collision is on a 
small scale, and between low spheres, it is not a high 
work of art. 

" But whether the collision presented be of a high 
order or of a low order, it bears a general resemblance 
to every other collision — the infinite is always like itself 
in all its manifestation. The lower the collision, the 
more it becomes merely symbolical as a work of art, 
and the less it adequately represents the infinite. 

"Thus the lofty mountain peaks of Bierstadt, 
which rise up into the regions of clearness and sun- 
shine beyond the realms of change, do this only because 
of a force that contradicts gravitation, which continu- 
ally abases them. The contrast of the high with the 
low, of the clear and untrammeled with the dark and 
impeded, symbolizes, in the most natural manner, to 
every one, the higher conflicts of spirit. It strikes a 
chord that vibrates, unconsciously perhaps, but, never- 



200 INTRODUCTION TO TIIE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

theless, inevitably. On the other hand, when we take 
the other extreme of ^painting, and look at the * Last 
Judgment ' of Michael Angelo or the ' Transfiguration ' 
of Raphael, we find comparatively no ambiguity ; there 
the infinite is visibly portrayed, and the collision in 
which it is displayed is evidently of the highest order. 

" Art, from its definition, must relate to time and 
space, and, in proportion as the grosser elements are 
subordinated and the spiritual adequately manifested, 
we find that we approach a form of art wherein the 
form and matter are both the products of spirit. 

" Thus we have arts whose matter is taken from (a) 
space, (h) time, and (c) language (the product of spirit). 

"Space is the grossest material. We have on its 
plane, 1, architecture ; 2, sculpture ; and, 3, paint- 
ing. (In the latter, color and perspective give the 
artist power to represent distance and magnitude and 
internality without any one of them in fact. Upon a 
piece of ivory no larger than a man's hand a ' Heart of 
the Andes' might be painted.) In time we have 
4, music; while in language, we have 5, poetry (in 
the three forms of epic, lyric, and dramatic), as the last 
and highest of the forms of art. 

" An interpretation of a work of art should consist 
of a translation of it into the form of science. Hence, 
first, one must seize the general content of it — or the 
collision portrayed. Then, second, the form of art em- 
ployed conies in, whether it be architecture, sculpture, 
painting, music, or poetry. Third, the relation which 
the content has to the form brings out the superior 
merits, or the limits and defects, of the work of art in 
question. Thus, at the end, we have universalized the 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 201 

piece of art — digested it, as it were. A true interpre- 
tation does not destroy a work of art, bnt rather fur- 
nishes a guide to its highest enjoyment. We have the 
double pleasure of immediate sensuous enjoyment pro- 
duced by the artistic execution and the higher one of 
finding our rational nature mirrored therein, so that we 
recognize the eternal nature of spirit there manifested. 

" The peculiar nature of music, as contrasted with 
other arts, will, if exhibited, best prepare us for what 
we are to expect from it. The less definitely the mode 
of art allows its content to be seized, the wider may be 
its application. Landscape-painting may have a very 
wide scope for its interpretation, while a drama of 
Goethe or Shakespeare definitely seizes the particulars 
of its collision, and leaves no doubt as to its sphere. So 
in the art of music, and especially instrumental music. 
Music does not portray an object directly, like the plas- 
tic arts, but it calls up the internal feeling which is 
caused by the object itself. It gives us, therefore, a re- 
flection of our impressions excited in the immediate 
contemplation of the object. Thus we have a reflection 
of a reflection, as it were. 

" Since its material is time rather than space, we 
have this contrast with the plastic arts; architecture, 
and more especially sculpture and painting, are obliged 
to select a special moment of time for the representa- 
tion of the collision. As Goethe shows in the ' Laok- 
oon,' it will not do to select a moment at random, but 
that point of time must be chosen in which the collision 
has reached its height, and in which there is a tension 
of all the elements that enter the contest on both sides. 
A moment earlier, or a moment later, some of these 



202 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

elements would be eliminated from the problem, and 
the comprehensiveness of the work destroyed. When 
this proper moment is seized in sculpture, as in the 
' Laokoon,' we can see what has been before the present 
moment, and easily tell what will come later. In paint- 
ing, through the fact that coloring enables more subtle 
effects to be wrought out and deeper internal move- 
ments to be brought to the surface, we are not so closely 
confined to the ' supreme moment ' as in sculpture. 
But it is in music that we first get entirely free from 
that which confines the plastic arts. Since its form is 
time, it can convey the whole movement of the collis- 
ion from its inception to its conclusion. Hence music 
is superior to the arts of space in that it can portray 
the internal creative process, rather than the dead re- 
sults. It gives us the content, in its whole process of 
development, in a fluid form, while the sculptor must 
fix it in a rigid form at a certain stage. Goethe and 
others have compared music to architecture — the lat- 
ter is ' frozen music,' but they have not compared it 
to sculpture nor painting, for the reason that in these 
two arts there is a possibility of seizing the form of the 
individual more definitely, while in architecture and 
music the point of repose does not appear as the human 
form, but only as the more general one of self-relation 
or harmony. Thus quantitative ratios — mathematical 
laws — pervade and govern these two forms of art. 

" Music, more definitely considered, arises from vi- 
brations, producing waves in the atmosphere. The co- 
hesive attraction of some body is attacked, and success- 
ful resistance is made; if not, there is no vibration. 
Thus the feeling of victory over a foreign foe is con- 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 203 

veyed in the most elementary tones, and this is the dis- 
tinction of tone from noise, in which there is the irregu- 
larity of disruption, and not the regularity of self- 
equality. 

" Again, in the obedience of the whole musical struct- 
ure to its fundamental scale-note, we have something 
like the obedience of architecture to gravity. In order 
to make an exhibition of gravity, a column is necessary ; 
for the solid wall does not isolate sufficiently the func- 
tion of support. With the column we can have exhib- 
ited the effects of gravity drawing down to the earth, 
and of the support holding up the shelter. The column 
in classic art exhibits the equipoise of the two tenden- 
cies. In Romantic or Gothic architecture it exhibits a 
preponderance of the aspiring tendency — the soaring 
aloft like the plant to reach the light — a contempt for 
mere gravity — slender columns seeming to be let down 
from the roof, and to draw up something rather than to 
support anything. On the other hand, in symbolic 
architecture (as found in Egypt), we have the over- 
whelming power of gravity exhibited so as to crush out 
all humanity — the pyramid, in whose shape gravity has 
done its work. In music we have continually the con- 
flict of these two tendencies, the upward and downward. 
The music that moves upward and shows its ground or 
point of repose in the octave above the scale-note of the 
basis corresponds to the Gothic architecture. This as- 
piring movement occurs again and again in chorals ; it, 
like all Romantic art, expresses the Christian solution 
of the problem of life." * 

* Vol. 1, pp. 122-124. 



204 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Historical Epochs of Art, — " At the commencement 
of the Western or European epoch of the world history, 
we have two nationalities sharply contrasted — the one, 
the Greek civilization, seizes upon and represents in the 
form of sensuous individuality its idea of the rational ; 
the other, the Roman civilization, seizes the realized will 
as the highest goal, and accordingly exalts the interest 
of the state above all merely individual interest. The 
Greek Homer paints for us the beautiful individual — 
Achilles or Helen or Paris or Hector ; so, throughout 
Grecian history we are always called upon to admire the 
individual — the graceful symmetry of character, whether 
it be of Theseus or Ulysses, of Pericles or Socrates, of 
Aristotle or Alexander. The general interest does not 
overshadow the individual ; the ' Iliad ' tells us how 
Achilles, by his wrath against the king Agamemnon, 
can thwart the purposes of the whole assembled army 
of the Greeks. 

" With Rome, the interest is not this interest in in- 
dividuals centered wholly in themselves. We admire 
Numa and the elder Brutus, Curtius and Cincinnatus, 
Fabius Maximus and Regulus, Scipio and Caesar, not 
for individual perfection so much as for their devotion 
to the state — for their self -sacrifice, and hence for their 
personality ; for man becomes a person when he sub- 
ordinates his mere individual will to the general will of 
the state. 

"Greece is comparatively external in her earlier 
civilization, Rome comparatively internal. The for- 
mer prefers what pertains to bodily form and to urbane 
manners — in short, to the arbitrary side of humanity ; 
while the latter prefers what belongs to the inner char- 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 205 

acter, to the deeper, more mediated, and hence more 
substantial culture. 

" Greece is the art nation and Eome the prosy na- 
tion of legal forms ; art personifies all nature and makes 
every stream a river god, every fountain the dwelling 
of a nymph, every grove and mountain the haunt of 
dryads and oreads. Out of that land of childhood, 
peopled by fancy and imagination, we step into Italy 
as the land of manhood, wherein the spirit no longer 
dreams of air-castles, but plies the daily care, looks with 
sober eye upon the world and sees things— -prose facts 
— and makes no more personifications. 

" In the course of events, \ when the fullness of 
time had come,' Christianity came into the world and 
found in Kome the ripest 'field for its insition and 
growth. It found its way also into Greece. The Chris- 
tian spirit was more akin to the Roman life than to the 
Greek life ; its penances and mortifications of the flesh 
were all foolishness to the Greek, but the Roman was 
used to personal sacrifice for the state. Hence Chris- 
tianity had many a hard conflict with the Eastern life 
that it did not encounter in the West. It had all 
the time a tendency to degenerate into image worship. 
How natural to pass from the worship of Venus or 
Diana or Juno to that of the Madonna ! Toward the 
close of the fourth century this became very prevalent 
and increased until Leo III, the great iconoclast, effectu- 
ally checked it. The strange inversion that then ap- 
peared is this: Greece, transformed by Christianity, 
goes to the opposite extreme and destroys all images, 
while Italy, whose prosy formality is broken up by the 
miraculous element in the Christian doctrine, goes over 

19 



206 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

to the sensuous so far as to refuse to give up image 
worship, and to secede from the East. Their principle 
carries the day, and the ISTicene Council makes it a 
Christian doctrine. Soon after, about a. d. 1000, the 
veneration for saints and sacred relics leads to the prac- 
tice of canonization, somewhat after the style of deify- 
ing departed heroes in a remoter antiquity. This was 
the basis laid for a future period of art in the Christian 
Church. But the crusades had to come first, and fill all 
minds with lofty aspirations that must be realized in 
some way. First by knightly deeds, personal prowess ; 
and next the faint aurora of modern art arose above the 
horizon with Cimabue, Arnolf di Lapo, and Giotto. 
Then, with Dante the new age began, Christianity 
had found poetic expression, and the Medici family a 
century after stimulated art to its career of greatest 
splendor. Perugino, founder of the Roman school of 
painting, is the precursor of Raphael, who finished his 
' Transfiguration ' two hundred years after the death of 
Dante ; Leonardo da Yinci, that universal genius, is a 
fitting precursor to Michael Angelo, the man in whom 
that age reaches its climax, whether we consider him 
as architect of St. Peter's church, as sculptor of the 
statues in the church of San Lorenzo, as engineer of 
the fortifications about Florence, as writer of sonnets 
profound and subtle in thought, or as painter of the 
frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and finally 
of the 'Last Judgment,' called the 'grandest picture 
that ever was painted ' and ' the greatest effort of hu- 
man skill as a creation of art.' In order to appreciate 
this great master-piece, we have to bear clearly in mind 
the antecedent phases of art and the limits of their 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 207 

achievements. We have symbolic art for the Orient, 
classic art for Greece, romantic art for modern times — 
this, if we take as our basis the generalizations of the 
best writers on the theme. In the symbolic art — the 
Egyptian architecture, for example, with its rows of 
sphinxes and huge pillars — we have a gigantic struggle 
— a vast upheaval — spirit struggling and upheaving 
matter to get free'and say something. This something 
it can never quite say. It is a riddle to it, and hence 
the Sphinx looks inquiringly to the blue vault overhead 
— an eternal question. Or the Memnori statue sounds 
at the rising sun,, but can articulate no oracle that shall 
break this spell. Truth to the Oriental peoples has not 
yet got separate from the mere symbol. In classic art, 
on the contrary, the statue of Apollo stands opposed to 
the Sphinx ; it is the achievement of what in Egyptian 
art is only struggled after. Spirit stands revealed in 
the posture and mold of every limb. The beautiful 
divinities of Olympus offer us the realization of this 
complete union of form and matter, of spirit and sense. 
The completest ' repose' is the result — no struggle 
disfigures the placid seriousness, the flesh is completely 
plastic to the indwelling soul. Why is not this the 
highest that art can do \ It is, if the highest goal of 
spirit is simply to live a sensuous existence. In all 
modern time we have those who defend classic art as 
the sole form of art worthy of imitation. But the 
Christian era brought in an idea that contradicts at once 
the basis of classic art. The soul shall be purified only 
through renunciation — the hair-cloth shirt, the knotted 
scourge, the hermit's cave, the monk's cell, plenty of 
fasting and watching, these shall fit the soul for divine 



208 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

life. But not so can one gain a beautiful physique. 
Haggard and lean and gaunt is Saint Anthony or 
Simeon Stylites — not at all like the Yatican Apollo or 
the boy Antinous. 

" So modern art must leave the repose of Greek sen- 
suousness and return again to the struggling of the soul. 
But this time it is not a vain struggle as in symbolic art, 
wherein no free expression is reached ; but romantic art 
represents to us the overpowering predominance of the 
soul over the body. Everywhere the latter is degraded, 
the former exalted. There seems to be an aspiration 
for the beyond, the super 'sensuous ', that which t passeth 
show,' and hence there is a contradiction in it. You 
look to see — what it tells you distinctly that you can not 
see — the truly beautiful with the senses. But at the 
same time the soul is sent back to itself, and its inner 
spiritual sense is awakened to see the eternal verities 
themselves. Thus in the highest painting of this form 
of art — ' The Transfiguration ' — we are referred upward 
and beyond from the demoniac boy to the disciples — by 
them to Christ, who again, with upturned gaze, refers 
us to the invisible source of light beyond our ken. As- 
piration — infinite aspiration — is the content of this art. 
But what shall we say ? Does art stop here ? Is there 
not a higher art than romantic art — an art in which we 
have presented to us the total — the aspiration and its 
fulfillment ? Such a stage of art does indeed exist, and 
deserves to be called ' universal art.' It is cosmical, be- 
cause it is so comprehensive as to exhaust all phases of 
the subject it treats. Inasmuch as it resembles the 
classic art in its reaching a point of repose, it may be 
called new classic art. Such art is exhibited in a few 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 209 

great masterpieces ; they are, chiefly, Dante's i Divina 
Commedia,' presenting the drama of human life as 
viewed from the Christian ideal ; Goethe's ' Faust,' pre- 
senting the series of phases passed through by the indi- 
vidual who ascends from the abyss of skepticism to the 
complete appreciation of the spirit of modern civiliza- 
tion and what it presupposes ; Beethoven's great sym- 
phonies and a few of his sonatas, like the great F minor, 
for example ; Shakespeare's ' Tempest ' and perhaps the 
' Midsummer-Night's Dream'; Michael Angelo's plan 
of St. Peter's church and his ' Last Judgment.' The 
old classic art realizes its repose in the individual — this 
is true even in the Laocoon. But the romantic presents 
the individual, or series of individuals, aspiring for a 
beyond, hence as out of repose ; but the new classic adds 
the goal of aspiration, and hence restores repose again. 
So the new classic — the Michael Angelo form of art — 
differs from that of Agesander and Praxiteles as the full 
grown oak does from the acorn. The acorn is complete 
as an acorn ; but the full grown tree is cosmical in its 
completeness; romantic art is the sapling oak — neither 
the repose of the acorn nor of the tree." * 

Religious Thought in Art. — "But could there be 
any religion in such art (Greek) as this ? Can religion 
be expressed by gracefulness ? Not our religion, not 
Christianity, nor, as we shall see, any of the other 
heathen religions ; they did not recognize tbe beautiful 
as the chief attribute of the divine, if, indeed, as an 
attribute at all. But the Greek religion made beauty 
the essential feature of the idea of the divine, and 

* Vol. 3, pp. 73-77. 



210 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

hence Greek art is centered on the beautiful and rep- 
resents the supreme attainment of the world in pure 
beauty because it is pure beauty and does not reach be- 
yond. 

"Christianity reaches beyond beauty to holiness. 
Other heathen religions fall short of the Greek ideal and 
lack an essential element which the Greek religion pos- 



" Perhaps we shall learn to appreciate our own relig- 
ion better if we look a moment at what the Greeks 
worshiped as the divine. They believed that the divine 
is at the same time human ; and human not in the sense 
that the essence of man, his purified intellect and will, 
is divine, but human in the corporeal sense as well. The 
gods of Olympus possess appetites and passions like 
men ; they have bodies, and live in a special place. They 
form a society or large patriarchal family. The mani- 
festation of the divine is celestial beauty. Moreover, 
the human being may, by becoming beautiful, become 
divine. 

" Hence the Greek religion centers about gymnastic 
games. These are the Olympian, the Isthmian, the 
!Nemean, and the Pythian games. Exercises that will 
give the soul sovereignty over the body and develop 
it into beauty are religious in this sense. Every village 
has its games for physical development ; these are at- 
tended by the people who become in time judges of 
perfection in human form, just as a community that 
attends frequent horse-races, produces men who know 
critically the good points of a horse. It is known who 
is the best man at wrestling, boxing, throwing the dis- 
cus, the spear, or the javelin ; at running, at leaping, or 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 211 

at the chariot or horseback races. Then at less frequent 
intervals there is the contest at games between neighbor- 
ing villages. The successful hero carries off the crown 
of wild-olive branches. Nearly every year there is a 
great national assembly of Greeks, and a contest open 
to all. The Olympian festival at Olympia and the 
Isthmian festival near Corinth are held the same sum- 
mer ; then at Argolis, in the winter of the second year 
afterward, is the Nemean festival ; then the Pythian 
festival near Delphi and a second Isthmian festival 
occur in the spring of the third year ; and again there 
is a second Nemean festival in the summer of the fourth 
year of the Olympiad. An entire people composed of 
independent states, united by ties of religion, assembled 
to celebrate this faith in the beautiful and to honor their 
successful youth. The results carried the national taste 
for the beautiful, as seen in the human body, to the 
highest degree. 

" The next step after the development of the per- 
sonal work of art, in the shape of beautiful youth, by 
means of the national games and the cultivation of the 
taste of the entire people through the spectacle of these 
games, is the art of sculpture by which these forms of 
beauty, realized in the athletes and existing in the minds 
of the people as ideals of correct taste, shall be fixed in 
stone and set up in the temples for worship. Thus 
Greek art was born. The statues at first were of gods 
and demi-gods exclusively. Those which have come 
down to us cause our unbounded astonishment at their 
perfection of form. It is not their resemblance to liv- 
ing bodies — not their anatomical exactness that interests 
us — not their so-called ' truth to Nature,' but their grace- 



212 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

fulness and serenity, their 'classic repose.' Whether 
the statues represent gods and heroes in action, or in 
sitting and reclining postures, there is this ' repose' 
which means indwelling vital activity, and not mere 
rest as opposed to movement. In the greatest activity 
there is considerate purpose and perfect self-control 
manifested. The repose is of the soul, and not a phys- 
ical repose. Even sitting and reclining figures — for ex- 
ample, the Theseus from the Parthenon, or the torso 
of the Belvedere — are filled with activity so that the re- 
pose is one of voluntary self-restraint, and not the repose 
of the absence of vital energy. They are gracefulness 
itself. 

"What a surprising thought is this of a religion 
founded on beauty ! How could it have arisen in the 
history of the world, and what became of it ? Let us 
consider a few of the elements wherein the Greek re- 
ligion was superior to other heathen religions. 

" The Hindoo worshiped an abstract unity, devoid 
of all form, which he called Brahma. His idea of the 
divine is defined as the negation, not only of everything 
in nature, but also of everything human. Nothing that 
has form or shape or properties or qualities — nothing, 
in short, that can be distinguished from anything else, 
can be divine, according to the thought of the Hindoo. 
This is pantheism. It worships a negative might which 
destroys everything. If it admits that the world of 
finite things arises from Brahma, as creator, it hastens 
to explain that this creation is only a dream, and that 
all creatures will vanish when the dream fades. There 
can be no hope for any individuality according to this 
belief. Any art that grows up under such a religion 



MAN; A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 213 

will manifest only the nothingness of individuality and 
the impossibility of its salvation. Instead of beauty as 
the attribute of divinity, the Hindoo studied to mortify 
the flesh, to shrivel up the body, to paralyze rather 
than to develop his muscles. Instead of gymnastic fes- 
tivals, he resorted to the severest penances, holding his 
arm over his head until it wasted away. If he could 
produce numbness in his body so that all feeling disap- 
peared, he attained holiness. His divine was not divine 
human, but inhuman rather. 

" The Egyptian laid all stress on death. In his art 
he celebrated death as the vestibule to the next world, 
and the life with Osiris. Art does not get beyond the 
symbolic phase with him. As in the hieroglyphic, the 
picture of a thing is employed at first to represent the 
thing, and by and by it becomes a conventional sign for 
a word, so the works of art at first represent men and 
gods, and afterward become conventional symbols to sig- 
nify the ideas of the Egyptian religion. The great 
question to be determined is this, what destiny does it 
promise the individual, and what kind of life does it 
command him to lead ? The Egyptian symbolizes his 
divine by the processes of Nature that represent birth, 
growth, death, and resurrection ; and hence conceives 
life as belonging to it. The course of the sun, its rising 
and setting, its noonday splendor, and its nightly eclipse ; 
the succession of the seasons ; the gennination, growth, 
and death of plants ; the flooding and subsidence of the 
Nile — these and other phenomena are taken as symbols 
expressing the Egyptian conception of the divine living 
being. Finally, it rises out of the immediate artistic 
description by symbols, and tells us the myth of Osiris 



214 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

killed by his brother Typhon, and of his descent to the 
silent realm of the under- world, and of his there reign- 
ing king, and of his resurrection. 

" The Hindoo art, on the contrary, dealt with sym- 
bols that were not analogous to human life. They rev- 
erenced mountains and rivers, the storm-winds, and 
great natural forces that were destructive to the indi- 
viduality of man ; but also reverenced life in animals. 
They founded asylums for aged cows, but not for de- 
crepit humanity. 

"Persian art adores light as the divine; it also 
adores the bodies that give light — the sun, moon, and 
stars ; also fire ; also whatever is purifying, especially 
water. The Persian religion conceives two deities, a 
god of light and goodness and a god of darkness and 
evil. The struggle between these two gods fills the 
universe, and makes all existence a contest. The art of 
the Persian portrays this struggle and does not let pure 
human individuality step forth for itself. In Assyria 
and Chaldea we have the worship of the sun, rather 
than of pure light. Hence, there were artificial hills or 
towers, constructed with ascending, inclined planes on 
the outside, rising to the flat top, crowned with a 
temple dedicated to Belus, or the sun-god. Images, 
partly human, partly animal, represented the divine. 
The lion, the eagle — the quadruped and bird — the human 
face, these were united to make the symbol of a divine 
being who could not be manifested in a purely human 
form. 

" The Egyptian religion, though it surpassed the 
Persian in that it conceived the divine as much nearer 
the human life, still resorted to animal forms to obtain 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 215 

the peculiarly divine attributes. There were the sacred 
bulls Apis and Mnevis, the goat of Mendes, sacred 
hawks and ibises, and such divinities as Isis-IIathor, 
with a cow's head ; Tonaris, with a crocodile's head ; 
Thoth, with the head of an ibis ; Horus, with the head 
of a hawk ; but Ammon, Phthah, and Osiris, with 
human heads and bodies. Thus we see that the Egyp- 
tian wavered between the purely human and the ani- 
mal form as the image of the divine. So long as it is 
possible for a religion to permit the representation of 
the divine by an animal form, that religion has not yet 
conceived God as pure self- consciousness or reason. As 
a consequence of this defect, it can not account for the 
origin and destiny of the world in such a way as to ex- 
plain the problem of the human soul . It is an insoluble 
enigma, whose type is a Sphinx. The Sphinx is the 
rude rock out of which it rises, symbolizing inorganic 
nature ; then the lion's body, typifying by the king of 
beasts the highest of organic beings below man ; then 
the human face looking up inquiringly to the heavens. 
Its question seems to be, ' Thus far, what next ? ' Does 
the human break the continuity of the circle of nature, 
within which there goes on a perpetual revolution of 
birth, growth, and decay ; or does the human perish 
with the animal and plant, and lose his individuality ? 
How can his individuality be preserved without the 
body ? The Egyptian's highest thought was this enig- 
ma. He combined the affirmative and negative ele- 
ments of this problem, conceiving that man survives 
death, but will have a resurrection, and need his par- 
ticular body again which, therefore, must be preserved 
by embalming it. The body of Osiris had to be em- 



216 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

balmed by Isis. The sacred animals (bulls and others) 
were embalmed after death. 

" They had not learned that the image of God is 
man and, more definitely, man's reason or self-conscious- 
ness. It was, therefore, a great step beyond the heathen 
religions of Asia and Africa for the Greek religion to 
conceive the divine as dwelling in human form, however 
defective it was in respect to its doctrine of the partic- 
ular attributes of men that are the true image of God. 

" Plato and Aristotle came to the thought that God 
is perfect, self-conscious reason, and created the world 
to reveal and manifest himself, and graciously (or as 
they express it ' without envy,') permits men to partici- 
pate in the divine reason and thus survive mortality. 
Christianity has ever admitted so much of the Greek 
philosophy into its theology as true doctrine. 

" Studied from this point of view it would seem 
that an interesting comparison may be made between 
some of the prominent works of Greek art and some 
of the Christian paintings. . . . For our purposes we 
must study the best known, or the most accessible, 
works of art. Let us first turn our attention to the 
Apollo Belvedere, perhaps the most generally known 
and most popular of all antique statues. . . . 

"The statue of Apollo is the highest ideal of art 
among the works of antiquity which have escaped de- 
struction. The artist has created this work entirely 
from an ideal, and has employed only so much material 
as was necessary to carry out and make visible his de- 
sign. This Apollo surpasses all other statues of the 
same as much as the Apollo of Homer excels those of 
succeeding poets. His statue towers above that of 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 217 

mortals, and his attitude bears witness to the grandeur 
with which he is tilled. 

u 'An eternal spring, as in the happy Elysium, 
clothes the noble manliness of mature years with pleas- 
ing youth, and plays with soft tenderness over the 
haughty structure of his limbs. Its author must have 
risen in spirit to the realm of immortal beauty, and 
thus have become the creator of a divine being possessed 
of beauty exalted above nature! For here there is 
nothing mortal, nor aught that appertains to human 
feebleness. No veins or nerves excite and rouse this 
body, but a divine spirit, which is diffused like a gentle 
stream, manifests itself, as it were, in every outline of 
the figure. Apollo has pursued the Python against 
winch he first bent his bow, and has overtaken it with 
his powerful stride and slain it. From the height of his 
all sufficiency, his inspired glance pierces beyond his 
victory as if into the infinite ; contempt sits on his lips, 
and the indignation which he suppresses expands his 
nostrils and rises to his proud forehead. But the peace 
whi'jh. hovers around the brow in a holy calm remains 
undisturbed, and his eye is full of sweetness as if among 
the Muses who seek to embrace him. In all the stat- 
ues of the father of the gods which remain to us, and 
which art reverses, he does not approach so near to the 
greatness with which the mind of the divine poet con- 
ceived him, as here in the face of his son ; and the sin- 
gle beauties of the other gods are here united as in 
Pandora. A brow of Jupiter, when about to give birth 
to the goddess of wisdom, and eyebrows which by their 
movement explain his will; eyes of the queen of the 
gods, arched with greatness ; and a mouth such as he 
20 



218 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

formed who infused voluptuousness into the beloved 
Branchus. His soft hair plays round his godlike head 
like the flowing tendrils of the noble vine, moved as it 
were by a soft breeze. It seems anointed with the oil 
of the gods, and is bound by the Graces on the crown 
of his head with charming comeliness.' . . . 

" Apollo was originally the sun-god ; but in course 
of time the Greek conception of him became higher, 
and he represents finally the noblest and best of the 
Olympian gods. He is the god of purity, never yield- 
ing to lust like Zeus. He is the god of healing, and 
also the leader of the Muses, and the god of poetry 
and music. He is the god of divination and spiritual 
light. His oracle at Delphi governed for a thousand 
years the Greek tribes, and for most of that period kept 
them united. Most important and elevated of his attri- 
butes is that of the purifier, who cleansed from sin and 
the avenging Furies the guilty ones who sought his 
shrine. . . . 

" Turning to a work of Christian art, we at once feel 
that we have entered a world profoundly different 
from that of classic art. 

" Romantic or Christian art in a certain sense con- 
tradicts art itself, inasmuch as it points beyond the vis- 
ible to an invisible which can not be adequately mani- 
fested in physical form. 

" In the cathedral of St. Bavo (formerly St. John's 
Cathedral) in Ghent, is, or was, a very celebrated altar- 
piece painted by the brothers Hubert and Jan Yan 
Eyck, both of Ghent. This picture was painted in oil 
colors and is regarded as the greatest work of painting 
in northern Europe. . . . 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 219 

" The subject is well chosen from the book of 
Revelation, affording opportunity for the employ- 
ment of the rich and vivid oil colors which had then 
become possible by Van Eyck's invention of a trans- 
parent varnish with which to dry the oils. 

" The blotting ont of sins and the reconciliation of 
man with God, through the sacrifice of the sinless Lamb 
of God, furnishes the theme — the highest theme of re- 
ligion, although perhaps it is not well adapted for art 
in the form conceived by Yan Eyck. We must not 
bring with us, however, ideas of the limits of sculpture 
and painting, but enter at once sympathetically into the 
work of art before us. We shall find this central relig- 
ious thought reflected from all parts of this complex 
altar-piece. ' The celebration of this idea,' says one, 
'runs through the whole like the theme of a sym- 
phony.' . . . 

" In each part of this great picture we see reflected 
some phase of the great central thought of the sacri- 
fice of the Lamb. The martyrs, the prophets, apos- 
tles, and Church fathers ; the righteous judges, the cru- 
saders, the pilgrims, the hermits, the instruments of the 
passion, the holy city, the prophets and sibyls, the fall 
of Adam and Eve, the sacrifice and murder of Abel, 
the Annunciation, Jehovah swearing to the new cove- 
nant, John the Baptist preaching Him who shall come, 
the angel choirs and orchestra celebrating the events, 
all carry us back to the one great theme — the redemp- 
tion of man by the act of Divine condescension. 

" In this work of art we do not see the gracefulness 
and beauty of form found in classic art, so much as the 
expression of deep religious feeling. The individuals 



220 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

have reached a state of inward reconciliation with the 
divine. 

" In the Yan Eyck altar-piece we recognize a work 
of art auxiliary to the Christian religion. Every part 
of it reflects in some significant way the great central 
theme of our faith — the redemption of man through an 

act of divine condescension. And vet we can not fail 

«/ 

to find something to criticise in the painted representa- 
tion. While the poetic imagination may conceive this 
relation of God to man under the figure of a sacrifice, 
and described in the book of Revelation the sinless 
Lamb of God slain for our sins, we are not shocked at 
the image of God in the form of an animal, because we 
go at once behind the image to its symbolic meaning 
and conceive, not the animal form, but the divine human 
form of Jesus. In poetry our fancy is left free, and we 
glide at once from the mental picture of the animal 
form to the divine significance that lies behind it. But 
when the animal form is fixed for us by plastic art in 
the shape of a statue or by graphic art in a picture, it 
occasions a shock to our gesthetic feelings, in proportion 
to our cultivated taste. A real sheep as an animal di- 
rectly before our sight and touch is not beautiful nor 
sublime nor divine in any respect except that of harm- 
lessness. But as a figure of speech which the mind en- 
tertains for a single moment before it passes on to con- 
template the divine-human Son of God 3 it is a beautiful 
and even sublime suggestion. 

" We see in the great altar-piece stately and solemn 
companies of saints and worshipers. Their faces are 
shining with the deep peace that comes from the recon- 
ciliation of the heart with God, a ' peace that passeth 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 221 

understanding.' It is this which re-enforces our relig- 
ious feeling, On the other hand the realistic lamb on 
the altar does not assist, but requires assistance from, 
religious conviction. The spectator must refer it to the 
familiar and cherished figure of speech, and bring its 
tender associations to his aid while he gazes on the pict- 
ure of a sheep upon the altar shedding his blood into 
the chalice. 

" Altogether different from this is the great work of 
Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel. We feel our- 
selves elevated out of our narrow present environment 
and borne aloft into a higher world in which we behold 
our religious conceptions realized in worthy forms. The 
facts of religious history become transformed by Michael 
Angelo's genius into eternal types of human religious 
experience. The histories of the Old Testament, if 
taken by themselves in an isolated form, may have little 
to aid our religious sense ; but when seized as eternal 
types of the history of the human individual and of hu- 
man nature in general, they furnish fitting language in 
which to express our own religious experience or the 
religious experience of all men in all future ages of the 
world. Just as the mythology of Greece has given us 
the conventional language of art and poetry and is a 
sort of literary Bible, so the history of the Jewish nation 
has become for us the conventional language of religion 
— the Holy Bible of all future civilization. Works of 
art, therefore, that give emphasis to this conventional 
language by supplying worthy pictorial illustrations cer- 
tainly aid the religious sense." * 

* " The Chautauquan," vol. vi, pp. 192, 193, 255-258,314, Janu- 
ary, February, March, 1886. 



222 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Influence of Religion upon Art — "That there 
should be a unity in man's higher endeavors is to be 
expected. His relation to the Absolute if threefold is 
still one relation. Thus art subserves the interests of 
religion, and in the form of speculative theology, re- 
ligion and philosophy become one. The onward prog- 
ress of each produces more and more a complete union 
of all in one. Art becomes religious, and religion 
uses aesthetic form, and philosophy comes lo be at 
home in either of the two provinces as well as its own. 
But in the history of this progress there is likewise 
developed difference in. manifold forms. Out of the 
germinating acorn pushes downward the root and up- 
ward the stalk in antithetic tension. Thus religion in 
its first distinction from art develops antitheses which 
are sharply in contrast with what is sesthetical. In a 
previous analysis we have traced out the element which 
religion adds to the art element (see next topic, ' Good- 
ness '). The phase of creative power that destroys or 
subordinates the immediate sensuous existence is clearly 
perceived in religion, and religion accordingly feels de- 
votion instead of cesthetic enjoyment. Devotion involves 
a subjective side, a perception of what a work of art does 
not possess. Every act of worship presupposes a con- 
scious Being with which the worshiper seeks to com- 
mune. All subjectivity withdraws itself at once out of 
and beyond the sensuous. 

" But from the lowest spheres up, there is an increase 
of adequateness on the part of art to present the content 
of religion. But art that should completely do this 
would vanish entirely beyond the appreciation of the 
senses, or would form a species of art like Browning's 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 223 

poetry, half aesthetic and half abstract, and addressed 
to the understanding. The paintings of Kaulbach be- 
long to this order. There is, however, genuine art that 
accomplishes true miracles in this direction. 

u Beethoven's ' Symphonies,' Michael Angelo's 'Last 
Judgment,' Dante's ' Divina Commedia,' Goethe's 
6 Faust,' these are some of the works that present us 
both the aesthetic and abstract or negative phases, and 
yet present us beautiful wholes. It is interesting to ex- 
amine how this is accomplished, for in this we shall find 
the most profitable answer to our inquiry as to the re- 
ciprocal influence of religion upon art. 

' ' It is foreign to the definition of art to attempt to 
portray the negative. The first attempts to do this are 
accordingly deeply impressed with this contradiction. 
It is romantic art that makes such attempts. After 
classic art had died and been buried for hundreds of 
years by the new religion — the Christian religion — there 
began again an aspiration to give sensuous realization 
to the divine — in this instance, the Christian form, of 
the divine. There had been a hard fight indeed to root 
out the Greek sensuousness sufficiently to make the re- 
ligion of Jesus of Nazareth flourish, and a race of icono- 
clasts had even to come first. But the West — Italy — 
where the internality of the conception of justice had 
developed with Roman power, there might with im- 
punity develop an aesthetic tendency, one not hostile 
to the Christian idea. Painting could portray such 
meekness and holy resignation in the face, and such 
fortitude under bodily suffering that it should be em- 
ployed first to represent our Lord in the events of his 
world-historical career, and second to do the same 



224 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

service for the saints and martyrs. Stiffness and awk- 
wardness in the pose of the limbs of the body ; emaci- 
ated forms, unkempt, unshorn, careless of raiment — as 
if purposely in contrast to the studied grace of classic 
forms — these saints invariably exhibited in their faces 
a perfect, implicit trust in the invisible. The visible 
which art portrayed said plainly, the visible is naught, 
the invisible is all. Utter neglect or contempt for 
worldly gratifications, and perfect repose in their faith, 
is seen in the early Italian paintings. Keligious in a 
certain sense these paintings are, but in such a sense as 
to exclude aesthetic. When after a period Raphael 
came, we find Yerj much that is aesthetic simply by 
itself, and yet every picture, even of his, admits the 
negative or ugly element as a memento mori at a feast. 
The ' Transfiguration ' presents to us the grand ' contra- 
diction ' of this species of art. The family of the insane 
boy — whose figure is strangely non-sesthetic — look to 
the nine disciples supplicatingly, while the latter point 
up to Christ — the latter, in his highest moment, with 
transfigured face gazes with faith and trust longingly 
into the glories that hide the invisible source of all 
strength and power. Thus the family show or mani- 
fest dependence on the disciples, the disciples manifest 
dependence on Christ, and the latter on an invisible be- 
yond. The whole picture is an index-finger pointing 
to an object that is not revealed. This and its class of 
paintings plainly say, ' I manifest that which can not 
be presented to the senses at all.' Here the negative 
side preponderates, and the chasm between the ' Trans- 
figuration ' and the * Apollo Belvedere ' or ' Yenus of 
Milo ' is enormous. In the latter is the perfect repose 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 225 

of attainment of titter freedom in the body ; they tri- 
umph in their incarnation. In the former there is the 
ecstacy of repose in the freedom from the body, and in- 
carnation is incarceration only to them. With Michael 
Angelo, indeed, we stop our flight to the beyond, and 
begin to realize that the sharp contradiction in romantic 
art may be surmounted. That daring genius everywhere 
unites the classic completeness and repose to the roman- 
tic striving and aspiration. In the 'Last Judgment' 
there is the totality of the finite mortal world placed 
under the form of eternity, and the infinite responsibil- 
ity which attaches to the individual, portrayed in the 
loots with which each one meets the fruits of his actions. 
Each one sees his life through the perspective of his 
own deeds. Thus there is totality which gives the 
aesthetic again and does not by this omit the negative. 
The separate statue of Moses all will remember as the 
grandest and noblest form in stone. The ' Apollo Bel- 
vedere' is a beautiful child, but Michael Angelo's 
' Moses ' is a full-grown man, transfigured with the 
growth of noblest human experience. 

"For the purposes of modern art as indicated by 
Michael Angelo, music is a far better instrumentality 
than painting or sculpture. Music already deals with 
the formless, with the phantasy, direct. It portrays by 
means of harmony and its opposite, and can represent 
an event in its inception, its progress, catastrophe, de- 
nouement, and final consummation. Thus it is exactly 
fitted to present the modern art which requires that not 
only the manifestation of the divine shall be made to 
the senses, but also the negative elevation of the same 
above the sensuous, shall likewise be portrayed in the 



226 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

same work of art, in order that the content of art may 
be adequate to that of religion. A work like Schu- 
mann's ' Pilgrimage of the Rose ' portrays first a naive 
infantile innocence and ignorance of life and its expe- 
rience — an abstract, moonshiny music to which fairies 
dance and bathe in the dewdrops of the flowers. Sec- 
ond, the experience with human life, with its cares and 
trials, its discipline, turns the music to the expression 
of pain and the accompaniments of mockery and scorn. 
The experience with death brings in the solemn requi- 
em, which in the presence of the nadir of human life 
lifts itself in trust and consolation to the invisible 
helper, and soothes the plaints of the disappointed soul 
which sought earthly pleasure alone. Lifted above the 
earthly and its pleasures as well as its torments, the soul 
gathers strength and attacks the real world with that 
independent spirit which is assured of an infinite refuge 
if obliged at any time to retreat from the battle. The 
finale gives us a complete and healthy conquest over 
the evils of life. 

"Any one of Beethoven's symphonies or sonatas 
will give somewhat in the same form a collision between 
the sensuous and spiritual in human life and the vic- 
tory of the latter, although frequently with very bitter 
struggles and plentiful self-sacrifice. 

" In poetry we have at start far less of the sensuous 
to deal with, for it appeals only to the ear rhythmically 
and in romantic poetry with rhymes also ; but relies for 
its sensuous effects chiefly upon the reproductive imagi- 
nation to bring up such images as it will portray. Its 
form, therefore, permits it to hold the whole compass 
of the matter of art from its genesis to its complete 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 227 

annulment. It was to be expected that poetry should 
lend itself to religion from the very first, and that its 
content should generally involve religious collisions. 
Secularity, indeed, as in Shakespeare, when portrayed 
in its totality or entire extent, gives the Divine will, 
just as religion does, in its separate moments. For the 
spectacle of the will of the individual presents first its 
spontaneous, impulsive acts, colliding it may be with 
right, human and divine. In the end comes the reac- 
tion upon the individual from the social and religious 
worlds of humanity, and the result certainly is the an- 
nulment of the individual and of his one-sided striv- 
ings, or else a reduction of his deed and intention to 
harmony with the ethical and divine will, as made valid 
by the institutions of the Church and civil society. 
Thus Shakespeare may be said to be a religious poet, in 
the sense that he presents other than sensuous mediation 
in his plays. In his great essay on Dante's ' Divina Co- 
media,' Schelling has characterized the true province of 
modern art and its difference from the antique : ' The 
antique world is that of classes, the modern that of indi- 
viduals ; the law of modern art is that each individual shall 
give shape and unity to that portion of the world which 
is revealed to him, and out of the materials of his time, 
its history, and its science, create his own mythology.' 

" That is to say, he shall make all the material of 
his time significant as type of the Divine purpose 'that 
moves at the bottom of the world.' Mythological figures 
are simply individual instances elevated to types, and 
thus transmuted from natural facts to spiritual facts 
and means of expression or portrayal — manifestation 
and revelation of the spiritual. 



228 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

" ' Into the struggle,' lie continues, ' between science ' 
(which creates abstractions and generalities) ' and re- 
ligion and art' (which demand something definite and 
limited) ' must the individual enter; but with absolute 
freedom seek to rescue permanent shapes from the 
fluctuations of time, and within arbitrarily assumed 
forms to give to the structure of his poem, by its abso- 
lute peculiarity, internal necessity and external univer- 
sality.' (This Dante has done, as he shows at length ; 
this has Goethe done in the i Faust.' No element of his 
own time or of the past history of humanity but is taken 
up into the work.) ' It unites the outermost extremes 
in the aspirations of the times by a very peculiar in- 
vention of a subordinate mythology in the character of 
Faust.' The action begins in heaven and passes through 
the world to hell and back again to heaven. In such 
works as ' Faust ' and the • Divine Comedy ' is found 
the highest achievement of reconciliation between the 
realms of art and religion, and one feels that what was 
in its earliest germs indistinguishably art and religion, 
as in the Edda or Hymns of the Vedas, perhaps may 
yet become one in the final perfection of art, in spite of 
the incongruities which appear in the middle period of 
development. 

" There is, however, another thought suggested by 
the consideration of Dante's ' Divina Cominedia.' This 
first great Christian poem is regarded by Schelling as 
the archetype of all Christian poetry ; its study in our 
time is to be regarded as a favorable sign. Of the 
thirty English translations of it, ten have been made 
within the past twenty years. The poem embodies the 
Catholic view of life, and for this reason is all the more 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 229 

wholesome for study by modern Protestants. The three- 
fold future world — ' inferno,' 4 purgatorio,' I paradiso ' — 
presents us the exhaustive picture of man's relation to 
his deeds. The Protestant ' hereafter ' omits the purga- 
tory but includes the inferno and paradiso. What has 
become of this missing link in modern Protestant art \ 
we may inquire, and our inquiry is a pertinent one ; for 
there is no subject connected with the relation of re- 
ligion to art which is so fertile in suggestive insights to 
the investigator. 

"To conduct one through Dante's great poem, 
which, as Tieck said, ' is the voice of ten silent centu- 
ries,' is not to be attempted here. Only a few hints as 
to its significance will be ventured, and then some of 
the traces of the same insight in subsequent literature 
pointed out. 

" One must reduce life to its lowest terms, and drop 
away all consideration of its adventitious surroundings. 
The deeds of man in their threefold aspect are judged 
in this ' mystic, unfathomable poem.' The great fact 
of human responsibility is the key-note. Whatever 
man does he does to himself. If he does violence he 
injures himself. If he works righteousness he creates 
a paradise for himself. 

" Now, a deed has two aspects ; first, its immediate 
relation to the doer. The mental atmosphere in which 
one does a deed is of first consideration. If a wrong 
or wicked deed, then is the atmosphere of the criminal 
close and stifling to the doer. The angry man is rolling 
about suffocating in putrid mud. The incontinent is 
driven about by violent winds of passion. Whatever 
deed a man shall do must be seen in the entire per- 
21 



230 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

spective of its effects to exhibit its relation to the 
doer. The inferno is filled with those whose acts and 
habits of life surround them with an atmosphere of 
torture. 

" One does not predict that such punishment of each 
individual is eternal, but one thing is certain — that with 
the sins there punished there is special torture eternally 
connected. 

" ' Through me ye pass into the city of woe. 
Through me ye pass into eternal pain. 
Justice the founder of my fabric moved 
To rear me was the task of power divine, 
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love. 
Before me things create were none save things 
Eternal, and eternal, I endure.' 

" Wherever the sin shall be there shall be connected 
with it the atmosphere of the inferno, which is its 
punishment. The doer of the sinful deed plunges into 
the inferno on its commission. 

" But Dante wrote the ' Purgatorio,' and in this 
portrays the secondary effect of sin. The inevitable 
punishment bound np with sin burns with purifying 
flames each sinner. The immediate effect of the deed 
is the inferno, but the secondary effect is purification. 
Struggling up the steep sides of purgatory, under their 
painful burdens, go sinners punished for incontinence — 
lust, gluttony, avarice, anger, and other sins that find 
their place of punishment also in the inferno. 

" Each evil-doer shall plunge into the inferno, and 
shall scorch over the flames of his own deeds until he 
repents, and struggles up the mountain of purgatory. 

" In the ' paradiso,' we have doers of those deeds 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 231 

which, being thoroughly positive in their nature, do not 
come back as punishment upon their authors. 

" The correspondence of sin and punishment is nota- 
ble. Even our jurisprudence discovers a similar adap- 
tation. If one steals and deprives his neighbor of prop- 
erty, we manage by our laws to make his deed glide off 
from society, and come back on the criminal, and thus 
he steals his own freedom and gets a cell in jail. If a 
murderer takes life his deed is brought back to him, and 
he takes his own. 

" The depth of Dante's insight discovers to him all 
human life stripped of its wrappings, and every deed 
coming straight back upon the doer, inevitably fixing 
his place in the scale of happiness and misery. It is 
not so much a ' last ' judgment of individual men, as it is 
of deeds in the abstract. For the brave man who sacri- 
fices his life for another dwells in paradise so far as he 
contemplates his participation in that deed, but writhes 
in the inferno, in so far as he has allowed himself to 
slip, through some act of incontinence. 

" If we return now to our question, what has become 
of the purgatory in modern literature, a glance will 
show us that the fundamental idea of Dante's purgatory 
has formed the chief thought of Protestant ' humanita- 
rian ' works of art. 

" The thought that the sinful and wretched live a 
life of reaction against the effects of their deeds, is the 
basis of most of our novels. Most notable are the 
works of Nathaniel Hawthorne in this respect. His 
whole art is devoted to the portrayal of the purgatorial 
effects of sin or crime upon its authors. The conscious- 
ness of the deed and the consciousness of the verdict of 



232 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

one's fellow-men continually burns at the heart, and 
with slow, eating fires, consumes the shreds of selfish- 
ness quite away. In the ' Marble Faun ' we have the 
spectacle of an animal nature betrayed by sudden im- 
pulse into a crime, and the torture of this consciousness 
gradually purifies and elevates the semi-spiritual being 
into a refined humanity. 

" The use of suffering, even if brought on by sin 
and error, is the burden of our best class of novels. 
George Eliot's ' Middlemarch,' < Adam Bede,' ' Mill on 
the Floss,' and l Eomola '—with what intensity these 
portray the spiritual growth through error and pain. 

" Thus, if Protestantism has omitted purgatory from 
its religion, certainly Protestant literature has taken it 
up and absorbed it entire." * 

Goodness : Influence of Art upon Religion. — "The 
three forms in which man attains communion with the 
highest life, and enters independent spirituaJ exist- 
ence, are art, religion, and philosophy. In art, as 
contradistinguished from the ' arts,' by which we un- 
derstand the mechanic appliances and dexterities de- 
signed and employed for man's well-being — for minis- 
tration to his wants of food, clothing, and shelter, and 
social, secular necessities — in art, as thus contradistin- 
guished, we include all realizations of the beautiful, all 
the diverse forms under which nations or peoples have 
endeavored to body forth in matter a manifestation of 
the highest in their consciousness. The divine, which 
in the consciousness of all peoples, is an invisible, for it 
represents the highest mediation, the completest gener- 

* Vol. 10, pp. 208-215. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 233 

alization of which that consciousness is capable— shall 
become a visible somewhat. That which is far with- 
drawn from mere local and temporal existence, shall de- 
scend into time and space, and become embodied in a 
thing which we can perceive with our senses. Art 
makes the invisible visible. 

" Religion has for its object a far higher function 
than art. It is not sufficient that some aesthetic feeling 
of the presence of the divine may be experienced — it is 
not sufficient that our outward senses alone shall give us 
intimations of the great ultimate fact of the world. "We 
must be able to form conceptions which shall realize for 
us in the depths of our minds and hearts the divine. In 
what we see with the senses we are relatively passive 
recipients, and we are limited by external conditions, 
the time and the place, but in our power to call up 
images and conceptions we are in the exercise of greater 
freedom. We can call up the religious representations 
under any and all circumstances ; they become, as it 
were, a present consolation which can not be taken 
away by external foes, but only forfeited through in- 
ternal personal lapse from holiness. 

" Not only is religion superior to art in this relation 
of freedom from the external limits of locality and 
time, but it has a more important prerogative in the 
fact that the portrayal of the divine is far more ade- 
quate than in art. Religious conceptions violate the 
demands of aesthetic truth, in order to present a deeper 
and truer idea of essential, spiritual existence. In the 
external form or shape we can have only the effects of 
spirit— its manifestation. But in religion we have 
revelation, and revelation is essential to all religion. 



234: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Revelation is superior to manifestation, in the fact that 
the latter gives us only the dead external results, while 
the former gives us the moving, creative causes. The 
self-active, spontaneous, free, can not be immediately 
presented to our senses. We can see or perceive only 
some disposition of matter so shaped and formed as to 
indicate the action of creative intelligence. The Apollo 
Belvedere has no limb or posture that does not seem fully 
possessed of the indwelling purpose of the grand per- 
sonality that animates the figure before us. The classic 
beautiful achieves its triumph in incarnating the free 
soul so completely that no phase or outline of the sculpt- 
ured block shall remain that seems to be in the way or 
not needed for the expression of the purpose of the di- 
vinity dwelling in the flesh. There is nothing more 
than this in classic art, and this is certainly enough. 
Ask yourself, in examining a work of classic art, is there 
an outline that looks as if it portrayed an external lim- 
itation which the individual had not been able to van- 
quish ? If you find any such limitation you will find 
something anti-classic, something that is not quite up to 
the highest standard which the Greek spirit conceived. 
But with its highest realization — take the Apollo Belve- 
dere — what is it more than an intimation of the free 
personal might ? It is not a revelation of it, but a 
manifestation. The religious contemplation of Apollo 
would dwell upon his generic attributes, upon his spir- 
itual disposition and character, and thus upon the cre- 
ative cause of any or all of the moments which art 
might seize and portray. The religious conception may 
avail itself to a greater or less degree of artistic embodi- 
ment — thus it almost always uses allegory, but it always 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 235 

transcends the aesthetic limit and introduces a negative 
element that destroys and makes null any sensuous 
manifestation. Take the Hindoo art, essentially the 
portrayal of incessant incarnation of vitality. The 
Greeks reproduced the same thing under the myth of 
Proteus, but did not make statues of Proteus. The 
East Indian made a statue with four faces and eight 
arms, or the Egyptian made a compound of animal, 
mineral and human, a god Osiris or a Sphinx. In the 
corresponding religious conception there was not merely 
the creative descent into form, but the negative idea of 
desertion of that form — death, transmutation, change. 

" An illustration of this thought occurs in the pres- 
ent aspect of natural science. In early attempts to con- 
struct a science of physics, men imagined the phenom- 
ena of heat, light, electricity, and sometimes even gravi- 
tation or attraction in general to be occasioned by fluids, 
or at a later period ethers or auras were introduced to 
explain them. Still later these are explained by vibra- 
tions and vibratuncles. There is a passage from mere 
images of the fancy to a process of thinking the destruc- 
tion of these images. The uncultivated thinker tries to 
conceive everything under the form of thing and its 
properties. When he has dissolved thing into an equi- 
librium of forces he has accomplished a great feat. Even 
the elevation from the thought of heat as a fluid to that 
of heat as a vibration of matter is the elevation from 
the thought of a thing— a dead result — to the thought 
of a relation. Heat as vibration is a relation — an activ- 
ity of something. When we consider that heat is a 
relative term and that all bodies have some heat, we see 
at once that all bodies must be in a state of continual 



236 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

vibration, which vibration is in a continual process of 
interaction, every body through its vibration influencing 
every other body. Then again the form of bodies and 
their properties, whether solid, fluid, or gaseous, whether 
visible or invisible, whether luminous or opaque, tan- 
gible or intangible — all these depend on calorific vibra- 
tions directly or indirectly. Thus we see that by the 
mere change of the hypothetical conception under which 
we conceive an object in physics, we enable ourselves 
to penetrate far into the -essence of the material 
world about us. A thing is a fixed dead result, but a 
force is a pure relation, that which exists in transitu 
— in its passage from one manifestation to another. 
All forces are manifested in their activity — in their pas- 
sage from one state to another. One force becomes 
another continually. All that seems fixed is really in 
transition, and the permanent is the law of forces and 
not the individual force — still less the temporary phase 
of the play of forces, the objects of our senses, what we 
call 'things.' 

" Similar to this elevation of the understanding from 
the idea of things to that of forces, is the elevation of 
the reason from the sphere of art to that of religion. In 
art the divine is presented to the senses as a thing — but 
a thing moved and swayed by free spiritual might. In 
art our point of departure is the thing, and we are thence 
elevated toward the conception of free personality ; the 
latter is intimated and not directly revealed. But in 
religion the Divine appears as creator and destroyer of 
natural things, as the dominant ruler elevated above 
nature, now manifesting Himself in the material as the 
beautiful or sublime, now manifesting Himself as the 



MAN : A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 237 

negative might that destroys the material form and 
reduces it to higher uses. These two phases combined 
make revelation, and hence it will be seen that revela- 
tion contains manifestation and its opposite or annul- 
ment. In the annulment of the beautiful the ugly re- 
veals itself, and hence religion essentially contains the 
element (or moment) of the ugly. The phase of forma- 
tion is followed by the phase of deformation, and this 
precedes the genesis of higher forms. 

" The true essence revealed in religion has still an- 
other form of existence to man. In his pure thinking 
it may be cognized as the scientific truth of the universe. 
Philosophy includes the systematic unfolding of this 
knowledge. Thus we may say art sensuously perceives 
the absolute as the beautiful; religion conceives or 
imagines the absolute as revealed in its traditions and 
mode of worship, while philosophy comprehends the 
absolute as defined in pure thought. Thus in the lan- 
guage of religion the three may be defined as follows : 
Art is the piety of the senses, religion the piety of the 
heart, and philosophy the piety of the intellect. The 
impiety of these faculties is easily formulated ; senses 
that can not discern the beautiful, but are content with 
what is ugly, have that form of impiety which we call 
bad taste ; the heart which does not find its consolation 
in the great doctrines of religion, the intellect which 
sets up as its highest principle any other than absolute, 
self-conscious reason or personality — these are the other 
species of impieties. 

"Looking again at the correlation of these three 
forms in which the individual communes with the high- 
est, we see a frightful chasm between the last results of 



238 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

abstract thought and the facts that appeal to the senses. 
It is the whole which is beautiful. Thus matter as 
matter — as a system of gravity — must be beautiful as a 
solar system. But our senses can not perceive the uni- 
verse, hence art strives to create a visible semblance of 
it in a convenient compass. The old mystics talked 
much of the macrocosm and the microcosm. The micro- 
cosm, or man, was the miniature universe, as indeed he 
possesses self-motion and the power of reflecting in his 
mind the macrocosm. It will be remembered that Leib- 
nitz, in his system of monads, has each one possess the 
power of representing in and to itself the rest of the 
universe of monads, all existing ideally in each. To 
Liebnitz, then, the progress of the individual history of 
each monad was a progress in the clearness with which 
it represented the universe to itself. Yery profound 
and suggestive is Leibnitz's system when applied to the 
world of souls, for souls only are true monads. The 
lowest monad, buried in itself, has only a dim capacity 
for feeling. Finally there is a monad that can sensu- 
ously perceive the beautiful — some Greek soul. Then 
a long distance beyond this soul is a soul that can repre- 
sent to itself not only the beautiful, but also the causal 
process which makes it ; here is a theistic, a Jewish 
soul. Another soul may in its representation be able to 
consciously mirror the conditions which lie at the basis 
of the two former stages of representation. In each 
stage of progress the soul adds, to the content of its 
representation, the counterpart which was lacking to its 
previous representation." * 

* Vol. 10, pp. 204-208. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 239 

Philosophy of Religion. — "The philosophy of re- 
ligion must be acknowledged on all hands as the most 
important work of the human intellect. In explain- 
ing religion as a phenomenon of human life, it is 
fonnd necessary to expound the idea of the first prin- 
ciple of the world — the Absolute. In defining his 
idea of the absolute, man defines his idea of his own 
origin and destiny, and the idea of the relation which 
lie holds to nature and to the Absolute. All prac- 
tical activity of man is conditioned throngh this idea 
of the Absolute. Man's immortality and freedom are 
conditioned directly through the nature of God. If 
God is an unconscious natural power, man can have no 
other destiny than to be absorbed at some time into this 
unconscious power, and lose his individual being. In- 
deed, on the hypothesis of an unconscious first principle, 
it is impossible to explain how a conscious being ever 
came to exist at all. For consciousness is directive 
power, and the rationality which manifests itself in con- 
sciousness is an indefinitely growing potency in the ~ 
control of the world, perpetually imposing its own forms 
on brute matter, and subordinating it to the service of 
man just as if man had made it originally for his own 
use. The hasty and general outlook is sufficient to give 
the presumption that the absolute is not only an all- 
powerful might, but an all-knowing might. The one 
most important truth of all is the truth in regard to the 
resemblance or difference of this first principle from 
man. If man, as consciousness, is in its image, then 
the trend of the universe is in the direction of the 
triumph of man's cause. His development will be 
an ascent toward the divine. In knowing himself, 



240 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

man will know with some degree of adequacy the di- 
vine. 

" Another consideration of equal importance follow- 
ing from this is the doctrine that God is a revealed 
God, if he is a conscious being ; his works reveal him. 
His creation is a manifestation of His will, and in the 
creation of intelligent beings He reveals His own intel- 
ligence. Hegel has laid great stress upon this thought 
in his ' Philosophy of Religion.' In the third part of 
that treatise he expounds the religion of the revealed 
God, calling it 4 the absolute religion,' conceiving 
Christianity to be this absolute religion, and showing 
by strict analyses of the contents of the other religions 
that no one of them makes God a revealed God, and 
that the reason for this is that the idea of God in the 
pantheistic and polytheistic religions is the idea of a 
first principle which can not be revealed in a created 
world. Neither man nor nature can reveal Brahm, be- 
cause Brahm is utterly transcendent, not only to the 
world, but to man in his highest development. Brahm 
lias no form, but transcends consciousness as much as 
he does material form. With this we have the world of 
nature and the world of man, not as creations of Brahm, 
not as revelations of that principle, but as pure illusion 
— Maya. This illusion is to be accounted for on the hy- 
pothesis of the fall of man into individual conscious- 
ness, wherein he distinguishes himself from the all. It 
is 'the dream of the drop that hath withdrawn itself 
from the primal ocean of being,' and which colors all 
its seeing with the defect of its own finitudc — conscious- 
ness being regarded as the origin of all division and 
particularity. Its form is that of subject-objectivity; 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 241 

i. e., of a subject which is its own object, and yet a 
subject which looks upon the object as a world of 
alien existence — 'It says "thou" to the rest of crea- 
tion.' What momentous import this theory has for 
the people who believe it, we know through the history 
of the Oriental world — a history which Hegel prefers 
to exclude from the world-history as being a history 
that contains no principle of secular progress within it. 
For it looks, upon all as negative to the divine, and 
hence as not being capable of improvement, but only fit 
for annihilation. The highest is Nirvana, or the rest of 
unconsciousness. Progress toward the annihilation of 
conscious being is progress toward the divine, as under- 
stood in the Orient, Such progress as that we call de- 
cay and decrease. 

"With the idea of a revealed God we discover a 
radically different solution to the world. We find that 
man has a positive work to do ; an active stage of civil- 
ization takes the place of Oriental quietism. Man has 
the vocation to render himself divine by learning the 
form of God's will as revealed, and then forming his 
own will in its pattern — adopting God's will as the form 
of his human will. He must learn the divine will, and 
make an utter sacrifice of his own will to it, so that his 
deeds shall be inspired through the divine, all finitude 
of the creature being offered up by renunciatory act to 
the divine, so that the conflict between the divine and 
human shall be ended by the self-devotion, the utter 
sacrifice of all selfishness on the part of the individual. 
The sacrifice of the Oriental devotee relates to the sub- 
stance of his consciousness, and ends in annihilation, if 
he can achieve so much as he aspires for. The Chris- 
22 



24:2 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tian renunciation does not go so far ; it recognizes in 
God the absolute form, instead of an absolute formless- 
ness. God has the form of consciousness, of personal- 
ity. Hence, with this idea of the divine, the sacrifice 
of the individual for the divine is no annihilation of in- 
dividuality, but rather the putting on the form of the 
freest and highest individuality. The sacrifice which 
the Christian devotee makes is no sacrifice of his human 
form, but only of its content ; he takes into the form of 
his will and knowing a divine substance, the substance 
revealed as the will of God, and by this he preserves 
his individuality, and yet removes the barrier betweeen 
himself and the divine through utter abandonment of 
self to the will of the divine will, which, being the will 
of a conscious personality, restores to man his sacrificed 
individuality in a transfigured form. Man, by his re- 
ligious sacrifice, therefore, gains all and loses nothing 
but finitude and defect. The doctrine of grace, as the 
highest principle of divine action toward the world of 
man and nature, is the only doctrine in harmony with 
the idea of a revelation of God through creation. Were 
God any other than conscious personality, man and na- 
ture would reveal something essentially different from 
Him. A world which offers us a series of beings as- 
cending from the inorganic to the organic, and crowns 
all with a human race, reveals a conscious first princi- 
ple by pointing toward it as the final cause of its pro- 
gressive series. It points toward such a divine princi- 
ple, and only toward it." * 

Gpoclnes§ : Ethical Bight. — " Man is born an ani- 

* Vol. 15, pp. 207-209. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 243 

mal, but must become a spiritual being. He is limited 
to the present moment and to the present place, but he 
must conquer all places and all times. Man, therefore, 
has an ideal of culture which it is his destiny or vocation 
to achieve. 

" He must lift himself above his mere particular ex- 
istence toward universal existence. All peoples, no 
matter how degraded, recognize this duty. The South 
Sea Islander commences with his infant child and 
teaches him habits that conform to that phase of civili- 
zation — an ethical code fitting him to live in that com- 
munity — and, above all, the mother-tongue, so that he 
may receive the results of the perceptions and reflec- 
tions of his fellow-beings and communicate his own to 
them. The experience of the tribe, a slow accretion 
through years and ages, shall be preserved and com- 
municated to each new-born child, vicariously saving 
him from endless labor and suffering. Through culture 
the individual shall acquire the experience of the spe- 
cies — shall live the life of the race, and be lifted above 
himself. Such a process as culture thus puts man above 
the accidents of time and place in so far as the tribe or 
race has accomplished this. 

" Whatever lifts man above immediate existence, 
the wants and impulses of the present moment, and 
gives him self-control, is called ethical. The ethical 
grounds itself, therefore, in man's existence in the spe- 
cies and in the • possibility of the realization of the spe- 
cies in the individual. Hence, too, the ethical points 
toward immortality as its presupposition. Death comes 
through the inadequacy of the individual organism to 
adjust itself to the environment; the conditions are too 



244: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

general, and the individual gets lost in the changes that 
come to it. Were the individual capable of adapting 
himself to all changes, there could be no death ; the in- 
dividual would be perfectly universal. This process of 
culture that distinguishes man from all other animals 
points toward the formation of an immortal individual 
distinct from the body within which it dwells— an indi- 
vidual who has the capacity to realize within himself 
the entire species. 

"Immortality thus complements the ethical idea. 
In an infinite universe the process of realizing the ex- 
perience of all beings by each being must itself be of 
infinite duration* The doctrine of immortality, there- 
fore, places man's life under the form of eternity and 
ennobles mortal life to its highest potency. 

" Since ethics rests on the idea of a social whole as 
the totality of man, and on the idea of an immortal life 
as the condition of realizing in each man the life of the 
whole, it lays great stress on the attitude of renuncia- 
tion on the part of the individual. The special man 
must deny himself, sacrifice the present moment in 
order to attain the higher form of eternity. To act in- 
differently toward the present moment is to ' act disin- 
terestedly,' as it is called. It is the preference of re- 
flected good for immediate good — my good reflected 
from all humanity, my good after their good and 
through their good, and not my good before their good 
and instead of their good. 

" This doctrine of disinterestedness has been per- 
verted into a doctrine of annihilation of all interest by 
a school of ascetic moralists in our time — the school of 
the Positivists. According to them, it were a higher 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 245 

form of disinterestedness to forswear all interest, and to 
waive all return of good upon ourselves from others. 
In fact, the nejplus ultra of this disinterestedness is the 
renunciation, not only of mortal life, but of immortal 
life — the renunciation of selfhood itself. 

" Such supreme renunciation is the irony of renun- 
ciation. It would renounce not only the pleasures of 
the flesh ; but the blessedness of virtue and sainthood. 
It would renounce eternity as well as the present mo- 
ment. 

" The dialectic of such a position would force it into 
the next extreme of pure wickedness. For, see, is it 
not more disinterested to renounce eternal blessedness 
than the mere pleasure of the present moment ? The 
more renunciation, the more ethical. Hence the 
denizens of the inferno — those plunged into all manner 
of mortal sins — are more virtuous than the saints in 
paradise. For the sinners, do they not renounce bless- 
edness — the form of eternity — the infinite happiness, 
and in their self-denial take up with mere temporal 
pleasures that are sure to leave stings of pain ? What 
nobleness to prefer hell with its darkness and fire and 
ice to paradise with its serenity and light and love ! 
Is it not a step in advance even over such abstract ethi- 
cal culture as rejects immortality from disinterestedness 
to plunge into positive pain, and thereby exhibit one's 
abstract freedom from all lures to happiness? 

u But such ' ethical culture ' is not true morality. 
Disinterestedness is only a relative matter in it — it is 
incidental, and not the essential element in virtue. It is 
of no use whatever except to eliminate the immediate- 
ness from life. The individual should become the spe- 



246 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

cies, and, instead of receiving good directly, should re- 
ceive it as reflected from his fellow- men. Not to re- 
ceive it as reflected from his fellow-men would para- 
lyze the circulation which is necessary to the realization 
of the species, and man's ideal would vanish utterly. 
The principle of altruism implies receiving as well as 
giving. No giving can remain where no receiving is. 
Hence ethics vanish altogether with the paralysis of the 
return of good upon the individual from the whole of 
society. The individual is cut off from the species by 
absolute renunciation, and can not ascend into it by 
substituting mediated good for immediate, as all codes 
of morals demand. Humanity lapses into bestiality. 
Civilization is impossible without this ideal of the race 
as the goal of the individual. It is the object of lan- 
guage, literature, science, reiigion, and all human insti- 
tutions. 

" Thus, too, immortality is presupposed by all the 
instrumentalities of civilization. The completion of 
spiritual life in the communion of all souls is the final 
cause or purpose of immortal life." * 

Ground of Ethical Bight. — "Because the First 
Person knows the Second Person as self-knowing, he 
knows the self-knowing of the Second, and recognizes 
in the perfection of the Second his own perfection ; 
also, in the creation of the Third Perfect Person by the 
self-knowing of the Second Person, the First Person 
recognizes his own perfection, so that the Third Person 
proceeds not only from the Second Person, but also from 
the First Person. 

* Vol. 19, pp. 213-216. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 247 

" The Third perfect Personality is the Holy Spirit 
that lives in the Invisible Church. It is the archetype 
of all institutions. We recognize a sort of personality 
in institutions. The state, for example, has deliberative, 
executive, and administrative functions — an intellect 
and a will. What is imperfectly realized in historical 
institutions is perfectly realized in the Eternal and In- 
visible Church, which is composed of innumerable souls, 
collected from innumerable worlds, and all united, not 
by temporary devices of written compacts, or immemo- 
rial usages and formalities, but by the bond of love or 
the spirit of divine charity and self-sacrifice, for the 
true good of others. The Spirit of this infinite and 
Eternal Church is the Holy Spirit — 4 a procession but 
not a begotten,' because it arises or is an eternal invo- 
lution from the manifold of creation through the self- 
knowledge of the First and Second Persons. 

" Man as individual progresses or develops by social 
combination with his fellow-men, and thence arises in- 
stitutions of civilizations — the family, civil society, the 
State, the Church. Historical institutions, being finite 
and having limitations incident to organization, are per- 
ishable, but their archetype is the Invisible Church, into 
which go, or may go, all souls after death. The prin- 
ciple of social combination or co- operation is altruism, 
charity, or love, the principle which sacrifices self for 
one's fellow-men. In that principle alone can perfect 
organization exist. The Spirit of the Invisible Church, 
the archetype of the Visible Church, and of all other 
institutions of civilizations, is the Third Person of the 
Divine Being, the Spirit of love and co-operation organ- 
ized into the greatest reality of the universe. For it 



248 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

includes all souls that have lived in the universe from 
the timeless beginning of the consciousness of the Eter- 
nal Word. From this view we find the world to be the 
process of evolution of souls, so that this is the present, 
past, or future purpose of each and all stellar bodies. 

" The first self -active being in its self-knowledge 
knows no passivity, no imperfection, and hence no finite 
being. The world is not to be explained from his self- 
knowledge except by mediation of the Second Person, 
called the Eternal Word. The relation of the First 
Person is, or may be, expressed, therefore, by Justice. 
Justice returns the deed upon the individual and gives 
each its due. The due of a finite or negative being, 
whose individuality exists through separation and ex- 
clusion and negation of others, is therefore self-annihila- 
tion, and such is the fate of all finitude in the thought 
of pure self -activity, except it is saved through the in- 
tervention of the thought of the Second Person, who 
thinks his relation to the First as derivation or sonship. 
But the Eternal Word thinks his origination from God 
eternally as an annulment of passivity and isolated ma- 
terial existence, and a rising into the perfect unity of 
the Church. Here we have the form of perfect grace. 
A perfect being, whose entire activity brings up from 
nothing finite beings, and gives them existence and pro- 
gression in order to culminate in man, who can carry 
out this development by uniting with his fellow-men in 
social union, and ascend into the Invisible Church." * 

*Vol. 17, pp. 315,316. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 249 

Section VII. — The Emotions. 
Duplication of Self- Activity in Emotions : Sentient, Psychical, Rational. 

K Feeling, as it appears in the child, at first involves 
heredity, and its manifestations are in the form of in- 
stinct. It is immediate, and rules as a sort of nature. 
Whatever becomes a part of one's nature comes back to 
the form of feeling again ; hence the way to educate 
feeling is to make over a new nature, by acting on the 
will and intellect. Take the youth who has a perverse 
emotional nature through heredity ; make him form ethi- 
cal habits by unceasing practice of what is right. Teach 
him to see the good view of the world as a rational and 
necessary view, and when the good habit has become 
formed, and the intellectual view is accordant with it, 
the problem is solved by the new habit and view be- 
coming immediate again as a feeling. But the second- 
ary feeling, inasmuch as it is based on what has been 
reasoned out, and is not habit following blind instinct, 
is not a blind feeling, but an enlightened feeling. The 
tendency of all education must be from all blind feelings 
into enlightened feelings." * 

" Self -activity is in every new-born soul as a spon- 
taneity — a possibility of unlimited action, good or bad. 
But its activity must take a certain direction or else it 
will cramp and fetter itself. By bad action it will cur- 
tail the limits of its freedom ; by good action it will ex- 
tend those limits. In other words, the ideal nature of 
self-activity is expressed by the ideas of truth, beauty, 
and goodness, and in these directions the individual 

* " Education," vol. vi, p. 167. 



250 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

may develop himself without wasting his energy in 
self-contradiction. The opposites of the true, the beauti- 
ful, and the good, are the false, the ugly, and the bad. 
To do or produce these things is to do or produce what 
is internally contradictory and self-nugatory, and what 
consequently reduces itself to a zero. Such use of self- 
activity fails to develop it ; its endeavors do not build 
up anything ; all its products are negative, and it is left 
in the end where it started — at the bottom of the ladder 
of human culture. But whereas it started at first with 
butterfly wings and mounting hopes, it now, after its 
wrong efforts, sits down in despair, with an ever-gnaw- 
ing worm in its consciousness. 

" Educate toward a knowledge of truth, a love of the 
beautiful, a habit of doing good, because only through 
these forms can the self-activity continue to develop 
progressively in this universe. These forms — the true, 
the beautiful, and the good — will bring the individual 
into union with his fellow-men through all eternity, 
and make him a participator in the divine-human work 
of civilization and culture and the perfecting of man in 
the image of God." ■* 

" Educate the heart ? Educate the character ? Yes, 
these are the chief objects ; but there is no immediate 
way of educating these. They must be educated by 
the two disciplines — that of the will in correct habit, 
and by that of the intellect in a correct view of the 
world. "When the practical habit and the intellectual 
view coincide, then it becomes a matter of the heart, 
and character is the result. i Character,' said Novalis, 

* " Education," vol. vi, pp. 157, 158. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 251 

'is a completely developed will.' It is also a completely 
developed intellect. Because in God intellect and will 
are one ; so in man the highest aim is to unite insight 
with moral will. Self -activity becomes intellect, self- 
activity becomes will. At first self-activity is mere 
spontaneity without reflection. The highest character 
is infinitely reflected self -activity." * 

"Habit soon makes us familiar with subjects which 
seem remote from our personal interest, and they be- 
come agreeable to us. The objects, too, assume a new 
interest upon nearer approach, as being useful or in- 
jurious to us. That is useful which serves us as a 
means for the realization of a rational purpose ; injuri- 
ous, if it hinders such realization. It is a false and 
mechanical way of looking at the mind to suppose that 
a habit which has been formed by a certain number 
of repetitions can be broken by an equal number of de- 
nials. We can never renounce a habit which we decide 
to be pernicious, except through clearness of judgment 
and firmness of will. The passive habit is that which 
gives us the power to retain our equipoise of mind in 
the midst of a world of changes (pleasure and pain, 
grief and joy, etc.). The active habit gives us skill, 
presence of mind, tact in emergencies, etc.f By habit, 
the soul makes a second nature in place of its animal 
nature, controlling its body in accordance with customs, 
fashions, and ethical laws." £ 

In the process by which " the will makes objective 
its internal subjective form" there is reduplication in 

* " Education," vol. vi, pp. 167, 168. 

f " The Philosophy of Education," pp. 32, 34. 

% Ibid., p. 3. 



252 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tlie " emotional nature of man, involving his feelings, 
passions, instincts, and desires " ; and according as the 
emotions depend upon the sensuous ideas, abstract 
ideas, absolute idea, will the plane of the emotions be 
sentient, psychical, rational. 

Sentient Emotions. — " The bond that unites a peo- 
ple is a natural, and not an artificial bond ; it does not 
depend on leagues and treatises, but on community 
of descent and consequent identical race peculiarities, 
common language, manners and customs, and tradi- 
tions. Each individual of a people finds himself liv- 
ing in this identity with his people just as he finds 
himself living in identity with a family. The family 
identity (called ' identity ' because it is a common life 
the same for each, consisting of mutual relations and 
common possessions in which each owns an undivided 
share) is a i natural ' one in the fact that it, too, arises 
from the laws of nature, and not from free choice. The 
individual, e. g., can not choose his ancestry. This nat- 
ural unity of people gradually gives place to the recog- 
nition of common humanity and an observance of hu- 
mane duties toward all men. 

" The spiritual nature of man (his will, intellect, and 
heart) is opposed to his animal nature. Matter is ex- 
clusive ; animal gratifications are exclusive and selfish." * 

" In the world we find, besides bodies or forces, also 
life, or self-manifestation. Life is emancipation, and 
thought is its consummation. The principle of life is 
synthesis, combination, participation, Thought or mind 
is the realization of this principle. Hence the problem 

* " The Philosophy of Education," pp. 186, 187. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 253 

of life finds its solution in the law : Act for others ; live 
through them ; combine with them. For it recognizes 
itself in the others, and thereby cancels the alien ele- 
ment which belongs to matter. Hence in human his- 
tory arise all the institutions or combinations which 
serve to remove fate from the life of man and substi- 
tute for it forms of human help. The individual, so 
far as he is a natural being and possessed of a body, has 
relations to the without, is dependent and under fate. 
But human combination in the form of trade and com- 
merce, of special industries, and, above and beyond 
these, in the institutions of the family, the state, the 
Church, the civil corporation, shall make over man's ex- 
ternality into a human externality wherein his fate is 
only himself — is only the semblance of fate, but whose 
reality is his own self-determination. 

" Thus the solution of fate for man, as a union of 
the natural and spiritual, is to make the race the shield 
of the individual, to surround the individual with the 
species. All culture means nothing more than this: 
that the individual, by means of his activity, study, and 
practice, avails himself of the experience of the race — 
acquires its wisdom, and gains its mode of acting." * 

III. — Sensuous emotions include the many phases 
of pleasure and pain, hope and fear, arising from the 
supply or lack of the physical necessities, food, cloth- 
ing, shelter, etc. The beggar who can barely " keep 
soul and body together " and the voluptuary or " leader 
of fashion," who spends time and money and thought to 
tempt an already satiated appetite or to get " the latest 



* Vol. 11, p. 270. 
23 



254: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

in color or style," represent the extremes in this plane 
of emotions ; for " they are as sick that surfeit with too 
much as they that starve with nothing." 

As the thought and action of a large portion of hu- 
manity are concerned with the " things " of life, and do 
not arise out of the sensuous plane, so the emotions will 
necessarily be of the same order ; the solemn truth of 
this fact is strongly brought out in Helen Campbell's 
" Prisoners of Poverty," in which she shows that one 
of the greatest needs of the so-called " wage-earners " is 
an awakening of new desires, that " contentment with 
their lot " is an emotion fatal to true growth and prog- 
ress in any grade of society. Washington Gladden in 
"Applied Christianity" points out some of the ways 
that those of society more favored in ancestry and in- 
heritance can assist the less fortunate to participate in 
the higher possessions of the race ; thoughts that are 
concerned simply with the " daily round " must be 
modified and supplanted by the means of reading, 
music, amusements, social, and religious influences, by 
new thoughts, and then will the new thoughts and ac- 
tions become immediate in a new and higher grade of 
emotions. 

Owing to the complexity of man's nature in thought 
and action even in the merely temporal phases, any 
attempt to classify the countless emotions is for the 
most part arbitrary. Besides the legitimate emotions 
brought about by a wholesome regard for the needs of 
the body, there is not only the disproportionate care 
and anxiety for things fleeting and transitory, but also 
the degeneracy of the sensuous emotions into the sen- 
sual ; all forms of amusements involving gambling, ex- 



MAN T : A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 255 

cessive indulgence of appetite, all kinds of questionable 
literature, and social and business dealings arousing 
petty envjings and jealousy of the possessions of an- 
other, beget emotions which have arisen from thoughts 
which are ugly and untrue. 

Psychical Emotions. — " Spiritual life is participa- 
tion ; the intellect and the moral will develop through 
sharing all acquisitions with others. Wisdom is a prod- 
uct of the race, and not of one individual exclusively ; 
the greater the number who participate in wisdom, the 
better for all." * 

" Man is a being who can develop within himself — 
he can collect experience from the individuals of his 
species, and redistribute this experience to the individ- 
ual — thus elevating the life of the individual into the 
life of the species, and without destroying the latter's 
individuality, but, on the contrary, increasing it. For 
in our human affairs the man goes for most who has 
taken up into himself the life and experience of his 
fellow-men most effectually. Shakespeare and Goethe, 
Homer and Dante — these are vast individualities, com- 
prehending human nature almost entire within each. 
Man is great when he avails himself of the power of 
his species. Even the Caesar or the Napoleon is great 
through his representative character — summing up in 
his will the will-power of his nation and distributing it 
again to them as directive power. Each humble indi- 
vidual, too, who serves under the Caesar or the Napo- 
leon participates to some extent in the greatness of in- 
dividuality of the great leader, because he is led out of 

* " The Philosophy of Education," p. 187. 



256 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

and beyond himself to live for others and through oth- 
ers and in others. Thus each one gains individuality 
while he gives it to others. Here, in secular affairs, is 
the same principle which the doctrine of grace enun- 
ciates for the religious consciousness." * 

III. — As it is the nature and general scope of the 
different planes of thought with which we are concerned 
in psychology, so any attempt to fix a sharp dividing 
line between the different grades of emotions is useless. 
Love, hate, joy, sorrow, fear, hope, envy, etc., come 
from the participation of man with man in the common 
interests of humanity ; emotions which arise from the 
political, industrial, and social relations of mankind, 
may be called psychical. Emotions arising from the 
contemplation of man's relation to God are rational ; 
reverence, godly fear, humility, true charity — " devo- 
tion to others " — and a love for the beautiful and true 
partake of the nature of the divine. 

As thought in its nature is infinite, so emotions in 
the grades of psychical and rational are infinitely ex- 
pansive. The institutions of society, family, school, 
civil society, state, and Church, are for the assistance of 
the individual in the development of thought and will 
and feelings. In all these institutions the individual 
learns to subordinate his will to the will of others, and 
in giving up his selfishness he is enabled to co-operate 
and combine with others, and in so doing he receives 
their thoughts and becomes a participator in their spirit- 
ual life. 

In the family, the child begins the process of mak- 

* Vol. 15, pp. 209, 210. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 257 

ing over the instinctive feelings into conscious enlight- 
ened feelings, or emotions ; he receives from the family 
instruction which enables him to form habits of care, 
thoughtfulness for others, and obedience, which fit him 
for life in the other institutions of society ; in this fam- 
ily life the child receives this help freely, without all 
the suffering and experience which it has cost the pa- 
rents. The school is supposed to continue and supple- 
ment the training of the family. 

In civil society the individual, even when working 
from self-interest, as a manufacturer in making the best 
cloth that it may sell better, really works for the good 
of society ; and in turn the individual calls society to 
his aid and receives the products and experiences of 
others without the trouble of doing it all for himself. 
But when civil society generally recognizes, even in 
business transactions, that a reasonable " altruism " is 
a better principle of action than "self-interest," then 
will the emotions incident to industrial life be more 
akin to the heavenly ! 

The state further educates the individual in self- 
sacrifice. The state may demand the property, and even 
the life of the individual, and the state in turn protects 
and assists the individual. No more remarkable exam- 
ple of obedience to the state can be given than Socrates, 
who, when the sphere of the state was far less well de- 
fined than it is to-day, voluntarily gave himself to death, 
rather than violate his duty to that " larger self " repre- 
sented by the state authority ; and our own century 
has as conspicuous an example in the heroic and self- 
sacrificing Abraham Lincoln. 

But it is in the Church where the doctrine of grace 



258 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Las its best exemplification. The Church is the institu- 
tion which consciously adopts the principle of self-sac- 
rifice as the rule of thought and action. The spirit of 
the Founder of Christianity, who freely gave up all 
things, but in so doing entered into the glory and power 
of the Father, can enter and uplift the life of every in- 
dividual and every institution of society. 

Rational Emotions. — " It is possible to seize the 
principle of grace in an abstract manner, and set it 
over against other principles, such as justice and free 
will. Or it is possible to misunderstand it altogether, 
as in the case of naturalistic theories which can think of 
no possible view of interrelation except the materialistic 
one, which admits of no participation, but only of ex- 
clusion. Justice is not a principle which is to be 
thought as limiting grace ; grace itself assumes the form 
of justice in proportion as it meets the free responsi- 
bility of the individual. Without responsibility there 
can be no justice ; for justice returns upon the indi- 
vidual only what he has uttered in freedom. But the 
principle of grace extends below the realm of free re- 
sponsibility to the lowest manifestation of the creation. 
It is grace that draws up all creation toward the high- 
est, and endows beings with progressive degrees of in- 
dividuality and realization of the divine image. The 
animal, it is true, is not immortal, but so much life as 
it has is the life of the species, and is a gift of grace 
which gives him the light of life, not for his having a 
right to it, but for the sake of divine love which 
pours itself out in creation, from freedom and the de- 
sire of good. When the human being arrives, he pro- 
gresses into knowledge and will-power, and this brings 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 259 

responsibility, and with it the principle of justice. Jus- 
tice is the principle of grace applied to free beings, be- 
cause justice is respect shown to the responsibility of 
the individual who acts. Justice assumes the actor to 
be self-determined and free and to own his deed ; what- 
ever his deed is it is returned to him. To return the 
deed of an irresponsible being upon it would be to 
annihilate it. To treat a free being as though it did 
not own its deeds would be to offer indignity to it and 
annihilate its freedom. But freedom is itself the last 
and highest gift of grace, and grace will preserve that 
before all else. Freedom is self-determination, but not 
the self-determination of a mere particular individual in 
its isolation, but rather as participation in the life of 
the species — in the life of God, rather. Freedom, which 
should energize to will only its particularity, apart from 
the divine and from the human race, would merely set 
up for itself a limit in the race and in God. This 
would be the hell which selfishness makes for itself. 
Even grace, which seeks to give to others, receiving 
naught in return, would be the highest pain to the iso- 
lated will that seeks to find itself alone in the universe. 
Dante makes his "Inferno" to be caused by the fall of 
Lucifer, through pride, he striking the earth and hol- 
lowing out the vortex with its terraces on which sinners 
are punished. Pride is the worst of mortal sins, because 
it loves only itself and repels God and man and all that 
is valued by them. Grace is the most repugnant to 
pride. Next to pride is the sin of envy. But envy 
is not so deadly as pride in that it does not hate all that 
is from others. It hates God and man, but it loves the 
temporal blessings which they possess, and desires to 



260 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

possess them exclusively itself. Next above envy is 
anger, or that which does violence to its fellows against 
God. Anger is not so deep a sin as envy or as pride ; 
for it strikes the particular individual or special per- 
sons, but not the foundation of all society and of all 
union with God, while pride and envy are hostile to all 
association, whether with man or with God. 

" Christianity defines the ' mortal sins ' from this 
view of divine grace. Freedom is turned against itself 
for its own annihilation in these sins, because it wills 
against participation in the life of the species as well as 
in the divine life. It is the principle of grace which 
Goethe, in the second part of his ' Faust,' calls the 
eternal feminine ' Das Ewig-Wcibliche,' which is the 
moving principle of all progress toward the goal. 
Goethe, like Dante, makes divine love or grace the very 
element that is most painful to the devils who under- 
take to seize Faust's soul. Association is the most de- 
structive agency which fiendishness can come in con- 
tact with. The angels appear in the clouds strewing 
roses (of love), which the devils find to be the most ex- 
quisite torture when they are struck by them. Even 
the association of devils for a purpose is liable to under- 
mine the absolute hate which is the ideal of the perfect 
devil. Slavery would undermine it, for the slave would 
be forced into submission of his will to another ; and to 
toil for another is to sacrifice one's self for that other, and 
to some extent to realize the principle of grace. So, if 
Mephistopheles controls other devils he realizes his pur- 
poses in and through them, and they subordinate their 
individual wills to his will — thus simulating the princi- 
ple of grace — thus deep is the principle of grace con- 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 261 

stitutive of the nature of the human world and of the 
forms of human life. Even slavery has a positive side 
to it, which is medicative toward those worst of spirit- 
ual ills — pride and envy. Goethe had come to this 
view of grace during his life, starting with the panthe- 
istic theory, and finding its consequences inhuman ; not 
even devils could live under such a theory. There was 
a glimpse of the true theory of the world in his mind 
quite early in life, and he tells us that he saw the Faust 
problem then in its entirety, first and second parts. He 
had seen that the universe is based in its deepest laws 
on the principle of ' saving grace.' The three phases 
of holiness in the Christian Church are portrayed by 
him in the last scene of ' Faust.' There comes first the 
Pater Ecstaticus, who calls upon arrows to transfix him 
(as they did St. Sebastian), and for lances, bludgeons, 
and lightnings to martyr him, so that his 'pining 
breast ' may be rid of its i vain unrealities, and see only 
the star of everlasting love.' This view is simply nega- 
tive to the finite and earthly. Pater Profundus comes 
next as the representative of a more perfect state of 
holiness. He looks upon nature, and sees it as the 
spectacle of God's love forming and preserving created 
beings. Not only this, but he sees that even the light- 
ning and the terrible mountain torrent are messengers 
of love, bringing fertility to the vale and purity to the 
air ; he sees the world as instrument for the realization 
of spirit. There is next Pater Seraphicus, who is a 
higher saint, because he does not spurn the world and 
seek only his own bliss in ecstatic contemplation, nor 
see merely the mediatorial process in creation, like the 
Pater Profundus, but he ' takes up into himself the 



262 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

"blessed boys . . . brought forth at midnight hour, with a 
soul and sense half shut, lost immediate to the parents, 
by the angels straightway gained ' ; lets them see the 
world through his eyes, and, by allowing them partici- 
pation in his human experience, equalizes their fate 
which had denied them earthly life. Here we see that 
the soul is represented as gaining something positive 
from the earthly life which must be made up to it by 
the gracious aid of some Pater Seraphicus if too early 
death has deprived it of human experience. But Dr. 
Marianus (' in the highest, purest cell ') sees the Yirgin 
as the symbol of divine grace (as the feminine is espe- 
cially the bearer of human tenderness and mercy on 
earth, so it becomes properly a symbol of divine grace), 
and thus celebrates divine grace as the deepest princi- 
ple of the divine nature, and as containing all other 
principles within it. 

" Milton, in representing the fallen angels as having 
society and combination, in the form of a hellish com- 
monwealth, with a legislative assembly over which 
Satan ' exalted sat,' has painted the demoniac as possess- 
ing divine elements. It is Dante alone who has con- 
sistently presented to us the symbolic portraiture of the 
degrees of sin in its effects upon the soul, and has shown 
us Lucifer ' immersed to his midst in ice,' his pride re- 
pelling all the universe, and thus freezing him with iso- 
lation — for warmth is the symbol of association — even 
our clothing warms us by contact, and we warm our 
spiritual capacities into activity by association, contact, 
with other souls, so that love is regarded as spiritual 
warmth. The institution of the state and of civil so- 
ciety, of the family, and still more the institution of 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIYE INDIVIDUAL. 263 

the Church, weave for human life a spiritual clothing — 
the universal enwrapping the particular — and preserve 
vital heat within it. 

" If these views are correct, it is not wonderful that 
the great fathers of the Christian Church, who have 
seen this principle of grace revealed as the ground of 
true life and the solvent word that alone explains crea- 
tion, have laid so much stress upon it as to make it 
seem often as the exclusive principle rather than the 
inclusive principle. Hence justice has been opposed 
to grace and stern legality made to stand over against 
grace, simply because the principle of grace was inter- 
preted in a one-sided manner. Then, too, freedom has 
been thrust back as if it had been impossible with divine 
sovereignty ; when, in fact, it is grace alone that makes 
freedom possible. For freedom is participation in the 
form of the absolute, and hence the realization of inde- 
pendence, which alone can be conceived through the 
idea of love or grace which freely imparts itself to others 
and lives in their living." * 

Section VIIL— The Will. 

Stage of Knowing presupposed in Contemplation of Freedom — Substan- 
tial Will : Self- activity : Totality: Freedom— Formal Will: Action- 
Change sometimes regarded as produced only by Environment: Ex- 
ternal Conditions ; Motives. 

Stage of Knowing presupposed in Contemplation 
of Freedom. — " The truth of freedom or free will can 
not be seen from the second stage of knowing, which 
gets no further in its consciousness than the thought of 
environment. To it, therefore, fate is the highest 

* Vol. 15, pp. 210-213. 



264: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

principle. Again, to the first stage of knowing what 
seems very clear to the second stage may be a dark 
enigma. The idea of fate is to it inconceivable, be- 
cause it does not think objects as in a state of relativity 
to their environment. Although all experience con- 
tains the three elements already pointed out — object, 
environment, and logical presupposition — yet the first 
stage of knowing is distinctly conscious only of the ob- 
ject ; the second stage notes chiefly the environment, 
and thinks things as conditioned by necessary relations 
of dependence, while the third stage of knowing looks 
especially to the logical presupposition. 

" Notwithstanding these radically different views of 
the world and its existences, it is not difficult to pass 
from a lower stage to a higher. Any one whose point 
of view is so elementary as to include the immediate 
object as the most essential item may be led up to the 
insight that the environment is most essential by calling 
his attention, step by step, to the essential relations 
which condition the existence of the object. He will 
soon come to see that the object depends on the envi- 
ronment, and will concede that the totality of conditions 
makes that object to be what it is, and prevents it from 
being anything else. This is the standpoint of fate — 
external constraint in the form of the ' totality of con- 
ditions ' environs all objects in the world, and makes 
them to be what they are. Any one habituated to ob- 
serve the essential relations or environment of an object 
will adopt this as a final principle until he gets the 
third point of view — that of totality. The underlying 
logical condition, which is presupposed both by the ob- 
ject and its environment, is not a dependent being, nor 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 265 

a mere correlative of dependence. It is a totality, and 
self -determined. 

" The conviction held by those in the first stage of 
knowing is that objects all possess self-existence in their 
immediateness, and that all relations are accidental and 
not essential. The conviction of those in the second 
stage is the relativity of all existence, and the omnipotence 
of fate. The third stage of knowing is the contempla- 
tion of the form of totality, which being self-determined 
is free. Its utterance therefore is : All beings are free 
beings, or else parts or products of free being." * 

" The second stage of thinking leads up to a third 
stage which regards all things as manifestations of self- 
activity — as revelations of the supreme, divine self-ac- 
tivity. The second stage of thinking is pantheistic, in 
so far as it looks upon all objects in the world as mere 
dependent beings caused through others and as not pos- 
sessed of self-existence. According to this view, it 
makes all beings necessitated by others, and these again, 
by others. The infinite progress of dependence upon 
others seems insurmountable. Pantheism denies true 
self-existence to all created beings. It makes them all 
shadows of an absolute which possesses no qualities or 
attributes. Quality and attribute are limitations, and 
hence incompatible with the absolute, says this second 
stage of thinking. But such an absolute is an empty 
void, for all activity is denied to it. If finite things 
are merely relative and dependent, they do not mani- 
fest or reveal ' the absolute ' as conceived by pantheism, 
and, hence, they are in very truth vain shadows. But 

* Vol. 17, pp. 342, 343. 
24 



266 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

an absolute that possesses no attributes and no self-ac- 
tivity is an absolute nothing. For it can not relate to 
the world as creator without activity of its own, nor 
can it relate to itself without self-activity. If it is a 
mere image or picture of some immense being occupy- 
ing space but devoid of motion, then the fact of its till- 
ing space makes it an aggregate of parts — a gigantic 
thing composed of things, and we have only the first or 
elementary stage of thought. The first stage of thought 
conceives things and not forces. If it attempts to con- 
ceive forces, it pictures them as things— heat, light, and 
electricity, as ' fluids.' The second stage of thought 
conceives forces as the reality underlying things. 
Things are equilibria of forces. The first stage of 
thought is atheistic, because it refuses to think a true 
absolute, but insists on an image or picture of some 
limited thing, however great it may be. The second 
stage of thought is pantheistic, because it can not see 
any independence or self-existence except in the abso- 
lute : ' The absolute is all that truly is, and all created 
beings are mere shadows of it.' This is the principle 
of ; absolute relativity,' which we hear from the evolu- 
tionists. All things are what they are through their 
relation to others. The totality is what it is through its 
relation to the absolute. The absolute is conceived in 
this theory as that which has no relations, and this is 
the fallacy of pantheism. 

" Pantheism is a true and valid thought, in so far as 
it perceives the necessity for a one absolute as the 
ground of a world of finite and transitory things. It is 
wrong, in so far as it denies self-activity to the absolute. 

" But atheism is no philosophic basis for a view of 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIYE INDIVIDUAL. 267 

human and divine relations ; nor is pantheism. Athe- 
ism logically sets up the principle of individual self-in- 
terest. Pantheism logically sets up (as Buddhism or 
Brahmanism) the absolute renunciation of the individ- 
ual. To be like its absolute it must annul all finitude, 
all individualism, and even all personality. 

" The third stage of thinking perceives self-activity 
as the first principle, as the absolute. Hence its abso- 
lute is not empty, but filled with self -relation which is 
thinking and willing. Its absolute is, therefore, crea- 
tive. While pantheism conceives an absolute which 
does not create because it does not act at all, and, hence, 
the beings in the world are to be regarded as shadows 
possessing no real being; theism, on the other hand, 
conceives the absolute as Personal Creator, and it looks 
upon the beings in the world as possessing reality in 
various degrees." * 

Substantial Will. — " Self -activity is freedom. De- 
pendence on another and passive recipiency of influ- 
ences from without signify fate and necessity. There can 
be no real individuality except in the form of self-activ- 
ity or self-determination. That which belongs to some- 
thing else, and exists through the activity of that other 
being, is only a manifestation or phenomenon. All that 
it is reveals the nature of the energy of that other. 
With only the idea of fate or external constraint, and 
no consciousness of self-activity as the ultimate presup- 
position, the mind is obliged to deny individuality even 
to human beings, and to regard all beings as phenom- 
ena. Phenomena are syntheses of effects, manifesta- 

* " The Chautauquan," vol. vi, p. 438, May, 1886. 



268 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tions of energy or influence, that has originated in some 
source lying beyond the sphere of manifestation. But 
just as the thought of influence or causality involves 
self-separation or self activity, so, as a matter of course, 
every special instance of it has the same implication. A 
phenomenon as a manifestation posits or presupposes 
the existence of the pure energy or self-activity whose 
manifestation it is. Dependence, or any form of essen- 
tial relation, presupposes self-existence as that on which 
the object depends and as that whose energy it mani- 
fests. 

" It is impossible, therefore, to think fate or external 
necessity as a finality, or, in fact, as existing, except as 
a result of freedom. ' All things are necessitated by 
the totality of conditions ' is the principle of fate ; but 
its logical condition or presupposition is that the 
totality of conditions is self-conditioned. If the totality 
of conditions contains energy, that energy must be self- 
determining or free. Necessity or fate presupposes 
freedom as its ground or condition. Hence, if there is 
anything there is individuality. But whether we shall 
find many individuals in the world, or whether the 
world as a totality forms only one individual, is not evi- 
dent from this principle alone. . . . But with the prin- 
ciple of fate as a finality, we should be obliged to deny 
freedom to all individualities, and explain persons as 
somshow products of fate.* 

" * Rowland G. Hazard, in his book on ' The Freedom of the 
Mind in Willing,' concludes that every being that wills is a creative 
first cause.' He shows that self-activity is an essential presupposi- 
tion of a conscious being possessing will. He has very acutely per- 
ceived that it is spontaneity or automatism that is denied by the 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 269 

" The fundamental truth is that the first principle is 
free, and that whatever is a totality (or independent 
whole) is free. It is clear that the first principle can 
reveal or manifest itself only in free beings. It would 
follow, too, that creation exists for the development or 
evolution of free beings, and that free beings can exist 
in a state of development. 

" There is change ; change implies that what is real 
does not cover all the possibilities of being. Water, for 
example, is liqnid at this moment ; at another moment 
it may be solid, as ice ; or an elastic fluid, as steam. It 
is only one of these states at a time ; one state is real 
and the other two are potential. Were it possible to 
regard the total existence of water as exhausted in these 
three states, we might say that water is only one third 
real at any given instant of time. Were all possibilities 
or potentialities real at the same instant, there could be 
no change. Here we arrive at the conception of actu- 
ality or total being, including all potentialities, whether 
real or otherwise. 

" One can get but little ways into the discussion of 
the great question of individuality without making this 
distinction between beings which are part real and part 
potential and those whose potentialities are all real. 
Self-activities are those which are all real ; they are 
self -realizing beings. Their real side exists through 
their will. But it seems strange at first that there 
should be two kinds of self-activity — the one a perfect 
Creator, God, and the other an imperfect self -realizing 



fatalists, and that they ignore a most obvious fact of consciousness 
and observation. 



270 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

being. Actuality is individual, while reality may be 
only a phenomenal manifestation of an individuality. 
The individuality, as self-active, exists as wholly real, 
and gives existence to a product of his will which forms 
a second sphere of reality. This second sphere of real- 
ity may be a progressive realization, and it is here that 
we have the distinction between God and man, God 
being perfect also in the second sphere of realization, 
while man is only progressively so. It is man's vocation 
to make himself objective in a second sphere of reality 
— the external world. When he has accomplished this, 
then he is both subject and object the same. 

" To this distinction of reality from actuality we may 
give other names, as, for example, phenomenon and 
substance. Phenomenon is the reality which is subject 
to change through the activity of the totality of the pro- 
cess. The phenomenon manifests the nature of the 
energy, which makes the process, that energy being 
always a self-activity. Substance is another name given 
to self-activity to express the phase of abiding and con- 
tinuance that it has. 

" Freedom is the essential form of the total or self- 
activity because it is independent. But in its self-real- 
ization it makes a second sphere of reality, the products 
of its acts. In what we call the actual there is the 
entire potency, which is manifested in the fragmentary 
realities not only in their creation, but also in their 
destruction. Hence it has been said, 'What is actual is 
rational,' because the actual is a process that annuls all 
partial realities. The more potentialities that are real 
the nearer is the existence to a true individuality. A 
being in which the entire circle of possibilities is realized 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 271 

is an actuality or energy and a complete individuality. 
When but few of its potentialities are real, it possesses 
little individuality ; for when new potentialities are 
realized the being is changed so much that it becomes 
another. A being with one of its potentialities real 
would be as unstable of individuality as a pyramid on 
its apex is unstable of position ; a being with all real 
would be immortal, though it were ever so undeveloped 
and lacking in education and culture. Before actuality 
a being progresses through evolution in which its indi- 
vidualities are continually lost. After actuality, per- 
manent individuality is attained, and it can progress 
only through self-determination, which shall make for 
itself a sphere of externality identical with its own act- 
uality. In one sense we speak of the uncultured man 
(child or savage) as having unrealized potentialities. 
These potentialities belong to his sphere of second real- 
ity, which he must create for himself." * 

Formal Will. — " A stronghold of fatalism is founded 
on a confusion of the different meanings of the word 
necessity. In logical necessity there is nothing to con- 
tradict freedom of the will. Only external necessity is 
incompatible with such freedom. It is a logical neces- 
sity that the totality must be self -active and free. An 
external necessity or constraint would destroy freedom ; 
but a moral necessity confirms freedom. 

" The most important distinetion is here to be made 
— the distinction between spontaneity or mere self-ac- 
tivity in its first degree, and moral freedom or self-activ- 
ity in accordance with its own nature. 

* Vol. 17, pp. 344-347. 



272 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

" It is clear that a self -active being may act in con- 
tradiction to itself, or in such a manner that its deeds 
are mutually destructive and reduced to zero. Or, 
again, it may act so that each act confirms and strength- 
ens all others. The latter species of acts is said to be 
moral actions ; it is in harmony with the nature of free- 
dom or self -activity, while the former is immoral and 
tends to mutual destruction. 

" Human institutions (family, society, state, Church) 
are founded in the interest of true freedom. The free- 
dom of each individual acting according to moral laws, 
goes to the support of all individuals in the exercise of 
their freedom. The individual may insist upon his 
caprice and arbitrariness, and set himself against the 
moral framework of society. In this case he exhibits 
his formal freedom at the expense of his substantial free- 
dom. For he obliges his fellow-men to conspire against 
the exercise of his powers, to realize his volitions, and to 
interpose prison bars or other constraint. His will can 
not be constrained, because it is absolutely self- active; 
but his control over the environment beyond the 
limits of his individuality is resisted by other free indi- 
viduals whose environment he attacks. Formal free- 
dom is the freedom to attempt whatever one chooses ; 
substantial freedom is the freedom of the race, which 
one individual shares with the rest by willing what is in 
accordance with the nature of self-activity, and there- 
fore co-operative with the moral will of all men. 

" This capacity for substantial freedom through com- 
bination of the individual with the race points toward 
immortality. Since each individual learns the nature 
of pure self -activity through observing the mutual effects 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 273 

of human deeds, that is to say, learns what deeds are 
not self-contradictory but affirmative through the moral 
laws discovered by the race as its aggregate wisdom, it 
follows that the perfection of each individual is attained 
in proportion to his acquirement of this wisdom of the 
race, and his realization of it in his own life. The free 
being has the power of co-operating with his race in 
such a way as to avail himself by intercommunication 
of the experience of all. Each life is thus in part 
vicarious. Each lives for the benefit of all, and all for 
each. By sharing in the experience of others the indi- 
vidual is enabled to reap their wisdom, and at the same 
time to escape the pain ensuing from their mistakes. 
Thus infinite growth in knowledge and holiness becomes 
possible. The ideal of human life is revealed in this : 
Infinite combination of humanity extending through an 
infinite future of immortal life ; growth in the image of 
the Personal God through membership in the infinite 
Invisible Church. The principle of grace is realized in 
human institutions. By social combination each gives 
his individual mite to the whole and receives in turn 
the aggregate gift of the social whole, thus making him 
rich by an infinite return." * 

III. — The substantial will is thought, self-determina- 
tion ; the formal will is action. The substantial will is 
freedom ; the formal will may not act in accordance 
with freedom. As a practical illustration, a person is 
determining what occupation he shall follow as his life- 
work. The substantial will freely creates the reasons 
for one course of action and then another, and then as 

* " The Chautauquan," vol. vi, pp. 439, 440, May, 1886. 



274 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

freely determines which of the ways considered, on the 
whole, is the best. In this thought, or will, the only 
restraint is in the mind itself, so that this very self- 
restraint is self-determination or freedom. But circum- 
stances may arise to hinder the realization of the sub- 
stantial will in external acts. The will of another per- 
son as freely determines a like course of action where 
there was opportunity for only one. The formal will 
or external acts of one collide with those of the other; 
and so the thought or substantial will of only one is 
rendered real in the formal will, or external acts. But 
the will of one was as free in his determinations as the 
other, and in the activity of the mind itself is the true 
freedom. For, could these two people have power of 
thought and knowledge sufficient to discover all the 
results that will arise from the fact that they both choose 
an occupation in which one of them can satisfy all the 
wants or demands of society in that line, one will free- 
ly determine some other course of action ; so that the 
fact that the formal will of one is restrained by the 
formal will of another only shows that finiteness brings 
limitations in thought, but does not change the fact that 
the will in its nature, in its determinations, is free. And 
it also shows that the more an individual realizes the 
thought of the race, or enters into the life of the species, 
the more will his determinations be in accordance with 
the substantial freedom of society, and fewer will be 
the collisions between his formal will and the formal 
will of others ; for society, past, present, and future, re- 
flects the will of God, and in God is perfect knowledge 
and perfect will, for " knowing and willing are one " 
with Him. 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 275 

And further, in his chosen occupation, as an owner 
of a distillery, the individual may freely determine his 
deeds in such a manner that his substantial will is not 
in harmony with the substantial freedom of society. By 
so determining, the individual cuts himself off from the 
true unity of thought and will of society ; and, if the 
substantial will of the individual becomes externalized, 
what had been already done in the determination of the 
individual becomes known to society through the formal 
will; but the formal will or deeds of the individual 
may contradict or destroy other deeds that were in the 
interest of true freedom. The individual freely destroys 
himself by .his own determinations, which, as thought 
cr substantial will, remain as sin which must be met 
with punishment or repentance, but which, rendered 
real through the formal will, become crime, and the 
state may, by a penalty which in a manner measures 
the deed, make known the fact that the individual 
has by his own determination cut himself off from so- 
ciety. 

Society may restrain the formal will, but not the 
substantial will, for that is individual. John Bunyan and 
Savonarola, although prison bars for years restrained the 
formal will of each, were, notwithstanding, free beings. 

Change sometimes regarded as caused only by 
Environment : External Conditions. — " *' Freedom of 
the will ' seems an impossible thought to all persons on 
the second stage of culture in thinking, and who, con- 
sequently, have not reached the idea of self-activity. 
To them, fate seems the only logical outcome in the 
universe. Their principle reads thus : ' All things are 
necessitated ; each thing is necessitated by the totality 



276 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of its conditions to be as it is, and whatever is must be 
as it is, and under the conditions can not be other- 
wise.' 

"Nothing seems clearer to the thinker who has ad- 
vanced beyond the first stage of thought, which regards 
all reality as made up of things without relations. The 
second stage of thought, which sees the essentiality of 
relations and dependence, has fate or necessity as its 
supreme principle. To it all movement and change 
seem to originate through some external cause. Ac- 
cording to it, therefore, there is no internal cause, no 
self-activity ; everything is necessitated by its environ- 
ment of outside circumstances. The difficulty with this 
view is that it confines its attention to dependent beings, 
and refuses to think of independent beings ; it thinks 
parts, but will not think the whole or totality. If the 
part is dependent and relative, certainly the whole or 
totality can not be dependent and relative. The to- 
tality can not be necessitated by something outside of 
it, precisely because the totality has nothing outside 
of it. 

" The totality must be self-necessitated or free. If 
the parts are necessitated by what is outside of them, 
yet the constraint is within the whole, and must arise 
in the self- activity of the whole. 

" The idea of change is inconceivable on this basis 
of universal necessity. If one admits the fact of 
change, he is bound logically to admit self activity in 
the totality. Let us look at this logic. According to 
the doctrine of fate, all things are necessitated by the 
totality of conditions. If things change, then some- 
thing new begins and something old ceases to be. The 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 277 

thing before the change was necessitated to be what it 
was by the totality of conditions ; and the new thing 
that has come to be after the change is also necessitated 
to be what it is by the totality of conditions. Under 
the same totality of conditions, however, there can not 
be two different states or conditions of a thing, for that 
would contradict the law of necessity and establish 
chance- in it place. Under the same conditions, a thing 
must always remain as it is and can not change. Only 
a change in the conditions, therefore, will make possible 
a change in the thing. For, as the two states of the 
thing, the one before, the other after the change, are 
different, they require two different totalities of con- 
ditions to make them possible, according to the law of 
necessity or fate. 

" By this process we have simply shifted the prob- 
lem of change from the thing to the totality of condi- 
tions. Having explained the change of the thing by 
the change of the totality of conditions, we are called 
upon to explain the change in the latter. Since it is 
the totality of conditions, there i3 no environment of 
conditions outside of it, and hence it is its own necessity. 
If it moves or changes it must move or change itself. 
Here we have arrived again at self- activity as the pre- 
supposition of necessity. In other words, necessity can 
not be the supreme principle, for it presupposes self- 
activity or freedom in the necessitating totality, as the 
source from which the constraint proceeds. 

" Thus the second stage of thinking is forced to con- 
tradict its principle of relativity and dependence on ex- 
ternal necessity, and admit the principle of freedom, 
although only in the totality. 

25 



278 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Motives. — "Since the objections to freedom of the 
will are based, for the most part, on the impossibility of 
self-activity, it follows that with the admission of its re- 
ality the chief difficulty is overcome. But it is surpris- 
ing to see how many devices the second stage of think- 
ing will invent to defend its position. A favorite ar- 
gument with it is based on the necessity of the strongest 
motive. The environment is conceived to be a list of 
motives which furnish alternatives of action. The 
strongest motive, however, is supposed to constrain the 
will and render freedom impossible. 

" Those fatalists who assert that the will is necessi- 
tated because it yields to the strongest motive, overlook 
the distinction between reality and potentiality, and do 
not consider that motives are possibilities and not reali- 
ties. A reality is not a motive ; a motive is only the 
conception of a desirable possibility. A potentiality or 
possibility is not an existence, but only an idea in the 
mind, which the mind originates by its own activity. 
After creating the idea of a possible existence the mind 
may make it real by an action of the will, or it may 
leave it a mere possibility. The mind creates the mo- 
tive by its thinking activity, and creates also its realiza- 
tion by its will-activity, and, hence, is doubly creative, 
doubly free. It is the grossest of errors, therefore, to 
conceive the mind as a mere agent that transmits the 
causality of the motive to the deed, when, in point of 
fact, it is the cause of both the motive and the deed. 
To say that a motive constrains the will is the same as 
to say that something acts before it exists. According 
to this view, the motive — a mere idea without reality, 
acts upon the will and causes it to produce a reality for 



MAN: A SELF-ACTIVE INDIVIDUAL. 279 

it — a possibility constrains a reality (the will) to change 
it (the possibility, the motive) into a reality." * 

III. — As in the above example, it might be said that 
the person did not freely determine his occupation in 
life, that his friends, relatives, family, or "circum- 
stances" determined what his occupation should be. 
In such a case, the freedom, the self-determination, has 
been removed from the individual to his environment, 
and the true substantial will or energizing remains, 
although transferred from the individual to the " total- 
ity of conditions"; but in placing the freedom, the 
self-determination in " circumstances " rather than in 
the individual, the individual becomes a product of 
fate, and it is in fact granting that " things " have more 
self-activity, more self-determination, than personality. 

Or, it might be said, that the strongest motive of 
the individual, as " money-making," determined his 
occupation. Such a thought considers "motives" as 
ready made in the mind in a series from low to high, 
or weak to strong, and any one governing the mind as 
the occasion may demand. The true thought is — the 
mind creates the motives as well as the action, and thus, 
instead of being impelled by the motive, is doubly 
creative. An instinctive inherited desire for making 
money is not a motive until the individual has con- 
sciously made it a thought, and in that very thought the 
mind was creative or free. 

* " The Chautauquan/' vol. vi, p. 439, May, 1886. 



CHAPTER V. 

IMMORTALITY OF MAN. 

" We come now to consider the question of the in- 
dividual immortality of man in the light of the princi- 
ples which we have discussed in the previous chapters. 
Our subject has two phases: First, we must inquire 
what are the conditions of immortality, and what beings 
in the world, if any, possess such conditions. Second, 
we must consider the question in the light of the first 
principle of the world, as we have found it revealed as 
the supreme condition of existence and experience. 

" How is it possible that in this world of perishable 
beings there can exist an immortal and ever-progressing 
being ? "Without the personality of God it would be 
impossible, because an unconscious first principle would 
be incapable of producing conscious beings, or, if they 
were produced, it would overcome them as incongruous 
and inharmonious elements in its world. It would 
finally draw all back into its image and reduce conscious 
individuality to unconsciousness. In our investigation 
of the presuppositions of experience, we have found 
causa sui, or self- activity, as the ultimate principle, and 
we find in the human intellect and will what is har- 
monious with that principle. Let us note that science, 
in teaching the doctrine of evolution and that of the 



IMMORTALITY OF MAN. 281 

struggle for existence, favors the doctrine that intelli- 
gence and will are the surviving and permanent sub- 
stance. For intelligence and will triumph in the strug- 
gle for existence, and prove themselves the goal to 
which the creation moves. 

" Space and time and inorganic matter are pervaded 
by the principles of mechanism and chemism. Organic 
being, whether plant or animal, manifests self -activity 
in various degrees. 

"The plant possesses assimilation, or the nutritive 
process. It reacts on its environment. It is a real 
manifestation of individuality. Perhaps one would say 
that the rock, or the waves, or the wind has individual- 
ity and reacts on its environment. Certainly the plant 
possesses individuality in a less questionable form. The 
action of water, air, and mineral does not avail to 
assimilate other substances .into its own form. The 
plant takes up some portion of its environment into 
itself and stamps on it its own form, making it a vege- 
table cell, and adding it to its own structure. It strives 
to become infinite by absorbing its environment into 
itself. But it can not conquer all of its environment 
in this way ; it would have to become some world-tree 
( Yggdrasil) to succeed in conquering all of its environ- 
ment. The infinite, the absolute, the self-active, must 
be its own environment. 

" The plant form of existence can not realize self- 
activity except to a limited degree. The portions of 
its environment which it takes up and assimilates, more- 
over, produce growth or expansion in space. This 
expansion implies separation of parts. The individual- 
ity of plants is rather of the species than of the particu- 



282 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

lar plant. The individuality is in transition, being 
manifested by the growth of new limbs, twigs, leaves, 
or fruit, sprouting out from the old as the first did from 
the earth. Because the plant is a constant transition 
from one individual to another it can not manifest 
identity except in the species. In the animal we have 
feeling and locomotion, and the unity is found in the 
particular animal as well as in the species. Feeling 
implies self-activity, not only in reaction on the environ- 
ment as in the case of nutrition, but in reproducing the 
impression made by the environment within the soul 
of the animal. Unless the animal reproduces for him- 
self the limitation caused by the environment there is 
no perception. The reproduction is accompanied by 
an unconscious judgment or inference that transfers the 
occasion of the feeling to an external world. Thus, 
time, space, and causality, function in feeling or sense- 
perception, but the subject is unconscious of them. 
The animal sees, hears, tastes, smells, or touches the 
objects of his environment, unconscious that he does 
this by reproducing within himself the shocks made 
upon his senses by them. 

" This activity of reproduction (sense-perception) is 
only in the presence of the objects. But there is a 
higher order of reproduction which is free from the 
presence of impressions on the senses ; this is called 
representation, and is in two forms — (a) recollection of 
former perceptions, and (h) free fancy, in which the 
soul causes to arise within itself by limitation new com- 
binations of perceptions recalled, or entirely new objects. 
Although the activity of representation is a higher form 
of manifestation of individuality, and seems to be quite 



IMMORTALITY OF MAN. 283 

free from time and place, because any former percep- 
tion may be recalled at pleasure, yet it is still inade- 
quate, because the object is a particular image, just as 
mucb as the perception of any particular object in the 
world. 

" The being which perceives or feels is a self- activity 
in a higher sense than is manifested in plant life, but it 
is not its own object in the forms of mere feeling, or 
sense-perception, or recollection, or fancy. Individual- 
ity is persistence under change, self-perservation in the 
presence of alien forces, and self-objectivity. It is self- 
determination, or free causal energy, causa sui. To 
have as object a particular thing, therefore, is not to be 
conscions of individuality, either of one's own or of 
another's. An individuality that does not exist for 
itself has no personal identity, and hence is indifferent 
to immortality. When the self-activity in reproducing 
an impression perceives at the same time its own free- 
dom or causal energy, then it becomes conscious of self. 
This takes place in the recognition of objects as belong- 
ing to classes or species. Here begins the immortality 
of the individual. Not before this, because the indi- 
vidual is and can be only a self- activity, and can not 
know himself except as generic. An individual that 
does not recognize individuality is not for itself, and its 
continuance of existence is only for the species and not 
for its particular self. But with the recognition of 
species and genera there is the recognition of self as 
persistent, although, at first, only in the form of recog- 
nizing the objects of the world as being specimens of 
classes and genera. 

" Here begins immortality of the individual with 



284: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the recognition of individuality in the form of species, 
and directly it manifests itself in the formation of lan- 
guage or the adoption of conventional signs to represent 
classes, processes, and species. If any of the higher 
animals shall be discovered to accompany the act of 
sense-perception by recognition of the objects as exam- 
ples of classes, and to possess conventional means of 
expressing, not particular objects, but general processes 
and species, then it will become necessary to admit the 
immortality of such individual animals. 

" Above this form of recognition of species the con- 
scious mind rises to the stage of reflection and the stage 
of insight. We have already discussed these stadia as 
(a) the perception of objects (b) their environment, and 
(<?) their underlying presuppositions. It is only in this 
latter species of knowing that the soul comes to recog- 
nize itself in its true nature, and it celebrates this fact 
first in religion as a knowledge of God as Creator and 
Redeemer of the world. 

" In our study of the idea of self-activity as the 
highest principle we found the explanation of the world 
and its destiny, and this explanation is the necessary 
complement to the psychological investigation of the 
question of immortality. The Divine Self -activity in 
whom knowing and willing are identical, so that His 
knowing is at the same time a creating of His object, 
knows Himself, but this knowing does not create direct- 
ly a world of finite beings. He knows only Himself and 
creates or begets His own likeness, a perfect being equal 
to himself, the Second Self -activity or Person. 

" The Second Person, equal in knowing and willing 
to the First, creates a Third equal to Himself, but also 



IMMORTALITY OF MAN. 285 

creates a world of finite creatures in a process of evolu- 
tion. Because the Second knows his own derivation 
from the First, which is only a logical precondition and 
not an event in time antedating his perfection (for He 
is eternally begotten), in knowing it He creates it, and 
it appears as a stream of creation rising in a scale of 
beings from pure passivity up to pure activity. 

u The inorganic nature, the plant, and the animal do 
not attain true individuality, but man does. Man makes 
his environment into the image of his true self when 
he puts on the form of the divine Second Person, as 
the one who gives Himself freely to lift up imperfect 
beings. As that form is the elevation of the finite into 
participation with Himself, so man's spiritual function 
is the realization of higher selves through institu- 
tions — the Invisible Church, which is formed of all 
the intelligent beings collected from all worlds in 
the universe. The social combination of man with 
man is thus the means of realizing the divine. The 
principle of the absolute institution which we call 
the Invisible Church is called divine charity or love. 
It is the missionary spirit, or the spirit of self-sacrifice 
for the good of others. This is the realization in man 
of the occupation of the Creator, and is, therefore, the 
eternal vocation of man. 

" If man were not immortal there would be a break 
in the chain of beings that reaches from the pure ex- 
ternal and passive up to the pure active, and hence the 
eternal elevation of the Second Person into equality 
with the First Person would be impossible, and, there- 
fore, the First Person would not know himself in the 
Second, and hence there would be no self-activity at all, 



286 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

and consequently, also, there would be no derivative or 
finite being. But this is impossible. The immortality 
of man and the necessity of intelligent beings on all 
worlds at some stage of their process is manifest from 
this. 

" The First Divine Knowing creates or begets the 
Second, and sees in it the world of evolution and also 
the Third divine unity of blessed spirits in the Invisible 
Church as the Holy Spirit. The creation of the world 
is the result of the knowing of the relation of the Sec- 
ond to the First Person ; and as all this is within the 
self -knowing of the First, its origin is called a c double 
procession.' It is not a genesis like that of the Second 
which is that of one person from another ; but a pro- 
cession inasmuch as it proceeds from the free union of 
infinitely numerous blessed spirits assuming the form 
of the divine life of the Second Person. 

" Let one remember that even our finite temporal 
institutions possess in some sort a personality — delibera- 
tive and executive functions. It could be said that the 
state possesses a higher personality than the individual 
: citizen, for it is not subject to his vicissitudes of sleep- 
ing and waking, youth and old age, sex, etc. But the 
, Invisible Church is the perfect archetype of institutions, 
! eternal in duration and infinite in extent, and complete 
and absolute in its personality. Space and matter 
exist only that worlds may become theatres for the 
birth and probation of souls. 

" The social life of man as it is realized in institu- 
tions — family, civil society, state, and especially in the 
Church — is his higher spiritual life. Were not human 
souls immortal as individuals, however, there could be 



IMMORTALITY OF MAN. 287 

no perfection resulting from the creation of the world, 
and hence the Second Divine Person could not con- 
template in creation his own logical precondition of ris- 
ing from passivity to pure activity; or, what is the 
same thing, He could not recognize his own derivation 
from the First ; and this would involve also the im- 
possibility of his own ascent to equality with the First ; 
and this, too, the impossibility of the perfect self- 
knowledge or self-determination of the First ; and this 
the denial of independent being, and of any being what- 
soever. Again, if we apply the principle of creation — 
self-knowing of the Absolute is creating — we may say 
that a world of imperfect beings implies the self -recog- 
nition of passivity or derivation on the part of the 
Creator. If there were actual present passivity and 
derivation, He could not be a Creator by reason of im- 
perfection which would appear as a separation of will 
from intellect, as in man. But his logical precondition 
of derivation and passivity would imply a First Person. 
Again, these two would imply a perfect final cause or 
end for the creation of imperfect beings which could 
only be reached by the tuition and education of these 
into a perfect institution possessing perfect personality, 
and through immortal life." * 

* Vol. 17, pp. 351-356. 



THE END. 



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